[House Hearing, 111 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] HOUSING FINANCE--WHAT SHOULD THE NEW SYSTEM BE ABLE TO DO?: PART II--GOVERNMENT AND STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVES ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ APRIL 14, 2010 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services Serial No. 111-121 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 57-739 WASHINGTON : 2010 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402-0001 HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts, Chairman PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama MAXINE WATERS, California MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York PETER T. KING, New York LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois EDWARD R. ROYCE, California NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina RON PAUL, Texas GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois BRAD SHERMAN, California WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York Carolina DENNIS MOORE, Kansas JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts GARY G. MILLER, California RUBEN HINOJOSA, Texas SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri Virginia CAROLYN McCARTHY, New York JEB HENSARLING, Texas JOE BACA, California SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina BRAD MILLER, North Carolina JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania DAVID SCOTT, Georgia RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas AL GREEN, Texas TOM PRICE, Georgia EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina MELISSA L. BEAN, Illinois JOHN CAMPBELL, California GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin ADAM PUTNAM, Florida PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire MICHELE BACHMANN, Minnesota KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota KENNY MARCHANT, Texas RON KLEIN, Florida THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio KEVIN McCARTHY, California ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado BILL POSEY, Florida JOE DONNELLY, Indiana LYNN JENKINS, Kansas BILL FOSTER, Illinois CHRISTOPHER LEE, New York ANDRE CARSON, Indiana ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota JACKIE SPEIER, California LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey TRAVIS CHILDERS, Mississippi WALT MINNICK, Idaho JOHN ADLER, New Jersey MARY JO KILROY, Ohio STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio SUZANNE KOSMAS, Florida ALAN GRAYSON, Florida JIM HIMES, Connecticut GARY PETERS, Michigan DAN MAFFEI, New York Jeanne M. Roslanowick, Staff Director and Chief Counsel C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on: April 14, 2010............................................... 1 Appendix: April 14, 2010............................................... 59 WITNESSES Wednesday, April 14, 2010 Crowley, Sheila, President, National Low Income Housing Coalition 36 Donovan, Hon. Shaun, Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.............................................. 6 Gleason, Thomas, Executive Director, MassHousing................. 41 Hopkins, Jack E., President and Chief Executive Officer, CorTrust Bank, N.A., on behalf of the Independent Community Bankers of America........................................................ 39 Judson, Rick, Third Vice President, National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)................................................ 44 Pollock, Alex J., Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute. 37 Randazzo, Anthony, Director, Economic Research, Reason Foundation 42 Reed, Anthony T., Executive Vice President, Capital Markets, SunTrust Mortgage, Incorporated, on behalf of the Financial Services Roundtable............................................ 34 APPENDIX Prepared statements: Kanjorski, Hon. Paul E....................................... 60 Crowley, Sheila.............................................. 61 Donovan, Hon. Shaun.......................................... 67 Gleason, Thomas.............................................. 80 Hopkins, Jack E.............................................. 84 Judson, Rick................................................. 92 Pollock, Alex J.............................................. 100 Randazzo, Anthony............................................ 105 Reed, Anthony T.............................................. 114 Additional Material Submitted for the Record Written statement of the Manufactured Housing Institute.......... 131 Written statement of the National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies, the National Association of Counties, the National Association for County Community and Economic Development, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the National Community Development Association.............................. 137 Joint Treasury and HUD press release entitled, ``Obama Administration Seeks Public Input on Reform of the Housing Finance System,'' dated April 14, 2010......................... 143 HOUSING FINANCE--WHAT SHOULD THE NEW SYSTEM BE ABLE TO DO?: PART II--GOVERNMENT AND STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVES ---------- Wednesday, April 14, 2010 U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Financial Services, Washington, D.C. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., in room 2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Barney Frank [chairman of the committee] presiding. Members present: Representatives Frank, Kanjorski, Waters, Velazquez, Watt, Moore of Kansas, Hinojosa, Baca, Lynch, Miller of North Carolina, Green, Cleaver, Klein, Perlmutter, Donnelly, Foster, Carson, Adler, Driehaus, Grayson, Himes, Maffei; Bachus, Castle, Royce, Manzullo, Biggert, Hensarling, Garrett, Bachmann, Marchant, Posey, Jenkins, and Lance. The Chairman. The hearing will come to order. This is the second hearing we are having on the restructuring of the housing finance system, and I stress that because it is not just Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; to do this thoughtfully, we want to look at the interactivity and interoperability of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Bank System, the FHA and Ginnie Mae, and the private sector. I think there's general agreement to the extent that we can have the private sector returned to a more vigorous role. We're all for it. And I will begin. We have a Cabinet officer, so we have 8 minutes on each side, and I will start off with 4 minutes for myself, so put me to 4 minutes. Thank you. The consensus is very broad that the existing system of housing finance has to be changed. The question to me that is at the heart of it is, what do we put in place of the current system? That means legislation, and I hope we can proceed to start drafting that very soon. We had the Secretary of the Treasury testify and now we have the Secretary of HUD. Originally, our plan was to have them both together, but I think this has worked out well. The Secretary of HUD is always accommodating to us. Having a second hearing is important, because it also gives us a chance to hear from a wide range of people. We will have had in both hearings people from all aspects of the housing field from the producer side, the Realtors and the homebuilders, and mortgage vendors as well as the bankers. We will have had advocates for low-income housing. We will have had academic commenters on this and all those are relevant. And it might be contentious to replace the current system, not simply abolish it, and then figure out what is the mix that goes beyond that. There will be some public sector entities, I believe, and some private sector entities. I think one thing that is clear is that the mix of public and private shareholder corporations with a public purpose that was embodied in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac model did not work in the end, and tension between those two contributed to the problem. I certainly am convinced of that, going forward. We shouldn't have that kind of a hybrid situation, and, obviously, there's a lot to be done by the private sector. That may mean nothing more than for the Federal Government to get out of the way, but there are questions that have been raised by Realtors, by homebuilders, by mortgage housers, and others about whether or not some sort of backup authority is there. We want to make clear that the Federal Home Loan Banks, which I think have worked very well, are also squared away in this. So the task of the committee is to take the lead in figuring out what the new mix of private and public entities should be in housing finance, and I think there is agreement that we need both. We have the FHA. We have Ginnie Mae. We have the Home Loan Banks. One thing I think is clear now is that mix should consist of separate institutions, that the hybrid, private shareholder corporation with a public mission contributed to this problem and we need to untangle that. I am pleased to see that the Administration has been responding to our requests that we get some movement here, and I know the Secretary will be talking about the statement that was released today from the Departments of Treasury and HUD, asking for comments. There were questions that they put out, and I'm going to ask unanimous consent to put this into the record. I believe the statement has been distributed. If the statement has not been distributed to all members, it should be, and I would ask the staff to distribute it. So I, at this point, will reserve the minute and 10 seconds left out of the 5 minutes, and I will recognize the ranking member for 3 minutes, according to his formulation. Mr. Bachus. Thank you, Chairman Frank. This is an important hearing on the future of housing finance and the Federal Government's role in that. It has been nearly a year-and-a-half since the bailout of Fannie and Freddie, and the Administration has just released today what can only be considered as their plan for housing finance. The chairman referred to it, and that plan is basically to poll the American people to ask them what they want to do about housing finance and the GSEs. So they're simply asking seven questions. I don't think we need polls. We need leadership. The press release accompanying this list of questions says their goal is to be transparent. What's abundantly clear is that the Obama Administration has no real plan for dealing with housing finance or the GSEs. During the last year-and-a-half, Republicans, on the other hand, have introduced a number of concrete measures to immediately address the failures of Fannie and Freddie, and have issued a strong set of principles and proposed reforms to protect taxpayers from further losses and future bailouts, and to build a stable housing finance system. One goal I believe we can all agree on is to start with re- establishing a housing finance market characterized by long- term stability and to which private capital is a primary source for mortgage financing. It also means restoring liquidity to the secondary market for residential mortgages and preventing significant disruptions to the financial market. We must encourage innovation and diversity in housing finance that provides more choices for consumers, not less. Just as importantly, reform must protect taxpayers from future losses and future bailouts, and require that taxpayers be made whole on outstanding loans, guarantees, and capital infusions made by the government. Mr. Chairman, it's long since past-due to deal with these bailout companies, which were the center of the mortgage market meltdown and cause a financial crisis. It's inexplicable that the Administration and the Majority in this House have no plans to deal with Fannie and Freddie and have failed to meet their self-imposed deadlines to come up with any sort of response other than to issue seven questions. So far, the Administration's answer has been to lift the caps on the bailout of the GSEs, guarantee the GSE's debt, pay the executives multi-million-dollar salaries, and hide the cost. So far, the American people have contributed more than $127 billion to bail out Fannie and Freddie on at least 80 percent of these companies, and have explicitly guaranteed more than $1.7 trillion of their debt and more than $5 trillion in their mortgages. The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired. If you want to give yourself more time, it would come out of the other members' time. Mr. Bachus. No, that's fine. The Chairman. The gentleman from California is recognized for a minute and a quarter, a minute and 15 seconds; is that right? Mr. Royce. A minute and a quarter. The Chairman. Yes, a minute and 15 seconds. Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. 25 means 15--excuse me. I'm doing my math here--a minute and 15 seconds. Mr. Royce. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I think going forward, the mortgage finance system should be based overwhelmingly on private investment. If it is the will of Congress to continue subsidizing affordable housing, which I think would be a mistake, it should be done through direct Federal appropriations. It should not be done through these institutions. I believe that, because I believe that government intervention was a major contributor to the mortgage crisis and that Fannie and Freddie were primary culprits in this. And I think that part of the problem, already, we see these calls for releasing Fannie and Freddie back into the market as quasi- private institutions. Part of the problem is that when the government creates a duopoly like this, it has enormous power, and it has power to come into the market, but also power to lobby Congress. So when Fannie and Freddie did not want to be regulated with respect to overleverage, what did they do? They came to Congress and they quashed that legislation, which the Federal Reserve had requested to allow the Feds to deleverage these portfolios. They were leveraged a hundred to one, a trillion dollars was lost. The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Pennsylvania is recognized for 3 minutes. Mr. Kanjorski. Mr. Chairman, we meet today to continue our discussions about the functions which the new housing finance systems should perform. I appreciate your efforts to focus the Financial services Committee on this complex set of issues and share your interest in these important matters. Today's hearing is just one of many conversations with stakeholders that we will need to have before determining what legislative actions we should take to achieve the end goal of re-establishing a healthy, stable housing finance system. I approach these debates with an open mind and no preconceived notion of what the solution ought to be. Through careful deliberation, however, I do believe that we can ultimately find the right policy approach. In late 2008, then-Secretary Paulson placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under conservatorship. Since then, the Treasury Department is committed to the purchase of more than $125 billion in preferred stock of the Enterprises. Government agencies have also purchased in excess of $1.3 trillion in mortgage-backed securities. All of these actions have preserved the availability of housing credit through these difficult times. The government, however, has further scaled back its commitments in our mortgage market since our hearing last month on this same topic. Specifically, on March 31st, the Federal Reserve ended the program to purchase mortgage-backed securities. As our markets recover from this financial crisis, we must return to the private sector those functions that properly belong with the private sector. Although we must continue to carefully monitor what happens to mortgage rates and investor demand, I am, so far, pleased with the results of this separation. In thinking about where we should go, we must also consider where we have been. In good times and in bad, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have historically proven vital to increasing liquidity and improving the distribution of capital available in home markets. Together, these institutions have helped tens of millions of middle-class families share in the American dream of owning their own homes. I want the new housing finance system to continue to achieve these goals. While I look forward to hearing the testimony of all the participants today, I am especially eager to learn the thoughts of the Secretary of HUD. His thoughts would help to guide the Capital Markets Subcommittee, as we continue with the explorations begun last June regarding the housing finance system. In our forthcoming hearings, I anticipate that we will explore specific questions like the need for mortgage insurance, the housing finance systems of other countries, and the structure of guaranteed fees. In sum, Mr. Chairman, these important matters are ripe for debate and represent the next big mountain that our committee must climb. The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Hensarling, is recognized for 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Hensarling. The principal reason we have experienced economic turmoil is Federal policy that has incented, mandated, and cajoled financial institutions to loan money to individuals to buy homes that they could not afford to keep. By most estimates, \2/3\ of all the bad mortgages in our system today were either bought by government agencies or required by government regulations with the CRA, FHA, HUD best practices, and perhaps, worst of all, the GSE's affordable housing mandate, all of which combined to wreak havoc in our residential housing market. So far, the American citizens can think of 127 billion reasons to terminate the GSE's government-sanctioned monopoly status. Clearly, I'm talking about their cost to the taxpayer. I see no economic, practical historical, compassionate or reasonable rationale why our housing markets need Government- Sponsored Enterprises. As they further monopolize our housing markets and hemorrhage taxpayer money, the Administration wants to take at least another year or so to monitor them. The Senate implicitly exempts them from their financial markets' regulatory bill, and the House explicitly exempts them. Enough is enough. That's why I have introduced H.R. 4889, the GSE Bailout Elimination and Taxpayer Protection Act, that over 5 years would phase-out their monopoly status, give them a level playing field, provide market competition, market discipline, and market innovation. And I would encourage the consideration of this committee. I yield back the balance of my time. The Chairman. The gentleman from New Jersey is recognized for 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Garrett. I thank the chairman for holding this hearing. I thank the Secretary for your testimony today. I wish I could also say I would like to thank both of you for actually presenting a plan to this committee that would actually reform the housing finance system and end the taxpayer-funded bailouts of Fannie and Freddie, but I can't do that, because they have not presented that plan. After the trillions of dollars that Congress and the Federal Reserve has committed to the credit crisis to bail out basically large financial institutions, most Americans who are watching would probably think that Congress would prioritize things, and prioritize things by fixing the most significant problems first. In this case, that would be Fannie and Freddie, the GSEs, which have cost the taxpayers the most money, and, as most experts would agree, are the central cause of this crisis. Fortunately, that's not the case in this instance. The price tag of bailing out Fannie and Freddie is currently close to $400 billion and counting, with no limit. This is more than all of the other bailouts combined, and, yet, this Administration and this Majority have remained silent and has not even proposed a plan to end the ongoing bailouts and reform the housing finance system. Worse, and some would say, they are using these two companies as a slush fund, if you will, to support an existing failed housing policy. Mr. Secretary, this cannot stand. This is unacceptable. We must end the bailout of these entities right now. And with that, I yield back. The Chairman. I will yield myself my one remaining minute and 15 seconds, and then the gentleman from Alabama has 45 seconds left. And I want to reiterate that we agree that the system needs to be changed. Where we have a disagreement between our two sides is that I agree with the Realtors, the homebuilders, the mortgage lenders, the low-income housing advocates, and a wide range of people who are on all sides of the housing industry that simply ending Fannie and Freddie with no idea of the replacement would do damage at a time of economic difficulty. We are in the midst of recovering from a very deep recession, but we are clearly not fully out of it and have much to do, and the housing sector is a part of it. I have read the Republican plan. I read the plan that they submitted in the bill that we did on financial reform, although we will note in their recommittal motion, which was the last vote that they offered in the Financial Reform bill, the proposed to kill their proposal. That is, they offered a recommittal motion that if it had passed would have led to no action in this area. So they have been on again, off again. I also regret they didn't join us in trying to limit the salaries, so the key question then is not whether or not we abolish them, but whether we at the same time work to put something in their place. The gentleman from Alabama is recognized for 45 seconds. Mr. Bachus. Mr. Chairman, it is time to quit asking questions and introduce legislation. I yield the balance of my time to Mr. Royce. Mr. Royce. Well, the other point I would just like to make is that I am hoping that we learn something, and my worry is that we erased market discipline in this equation by this government backing or implied government backing of Fannie and Freddie. And unless we figure out a strategy that brings the market back, I don't know how we avoid a situation in which Fannie and Freddie will again grow into a powerful duopoly, come up here, lobby Congress to get out from under the regulators and avoid the kind of regulation of the portfolios that we saw. Thank you. The Chairman. Mr. Secretary. And let me say we have the Secretary here. We do not hold Cabinet officers generally to a strict 5 minutes. We hope you talk faster than the Chairman of the Federal Reserve generally talks, but we won't be cutting you off at 5 minutes. STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE SHAUN DONOVAN, SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT Secretary Donovan. I will endeavor to do so, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bachus, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to talk about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, together often referred to as the GSEs and the Obama Administration's efforts to reform our housing finance system. As Secretary Geithner reviewed during his testimony before this committee last month, there were many contributing factors that led to the housing crisis of the past few years. I will not revisit those factors in detail, but suffice it to say that there is plenty of blame to go around from Wall Street to government to consumers and, of course, the GSEs. The Obama Administration's comprehensive response to the crisis has helped restore stability to the housing market, easing the very painful fall in home prices and contributing to our broader economic recovery. According to the Federal Reserve Board, stabilizing home prices and lower financing costs nationwide have supported the recovery of homeowner wealth. Homeowner equity started to grow again in the second quarter of 2009, and to date has increased over a trillion dollars or $13,000 on average for the Nation's nearly 78 million homeowners. Over 4 million borrowers have refinanced their homes in the past 15 months, saving an average of $1,800 per year on housing costs, pumping an additional $7 billion annually into local economies and businesses, and generating additional revenues for our Nation's cities, suburbs, and rural communities. And, just last month, our economy started creating jobs again-- 162,000 of them. At the end of 2009, quarterly economic growth increased at the fastest pace in 6 years. For all this progress, however, it is important to recognize that the housing recovery remains fragile. And, while the current status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship is a temporary one, they are playing a critical role in these still uncertain times. That is why as we think through the next steps in reforming our housing finance system, we must proceed carefully to avoid undermining the stability that has been achieved. As we consider housing finance reform and the role of the GSEs, I would like to speak today in more depth on three particular subjects. The first is the importance of maintaining equal access to housing credit. The second is facilitating a responsible, sustainable form of homeownership that involves safe, easily understood products. And the third is ensuring that reform creates a sustainable and stable market for rental housing, which is directly related to and influenced by the single family ownership market. America has a long tradition of leveraging capital markets to make long run investments that produce significant benefits. In recent decades, we witnessed a great democratization of credit. This broadening of access allowed many families who had previously been shut out to make investments in homeownership, and we subsequently witnessed the dramatic growth in ownership among underserved groups. Though the current crisis reminds us that great care is needed to promote homeownership that is sustainable over the long term, the Obama Administration will remain committed to providing access to underserved groups so that they can make long-term, sustainable investments in housing. Responsible homeownership can be a critical foundation upon which American families build wealth and stability. At the same time, we must also make sure that our commitment to access does not encourage the taking of imprudent risks. Consumer behavior was a contributing factor to the housing crisis, and we have seen the devastation that such risk-taking has inflicted upon families and communities across the country. Many borrowers simply used their homes like ATM machines without sufficiently considering the risk involved. Ultimately, we need a housing finance system that will help us once again see housing, not simply as a tool for investment returns, but as the platform for stability that it has been throughout our history. That will mean that for some, homeownership will not be the right answer. As you have noted on numerous occasions yourself, Mr. Chairman, while we continue to promote affordable homeownership, for many Americans, renting will continue to be the only or the preferred option. Therefore, the next generation housing finance system must also facilitate a healthy rental market as part of a comprehensive, balanced national housing policy that supports responsible homeownership and affordable rental housing alike. That requires ensuring that those renting have a real choice, meaning affordable housing that is close to schools, work, and amenities. A well-functioning rental market also will be particularly important in the immediate future as rental markets will absorb a larger than usual number of families who owned homes during the bubble, but will be renting in the near future. We thus cannot consider reforms to the ownership market without also factoring in the effects on rental markets. Those families with the fewest assets and resources, namely those who rely on the rental market, or are tenuously attached to homeownership, would potentially be exposed to greater volatility and turmoil absent a stable rental market infrastructure. We therefore must be careful to promote policies that provide countercyclical support for rental markets as we have for single family ownership markets. All of these issues point to the need for fundamental, but careful reform. Transition from where we are today to where need to be, however, presents several important challenges. The Administration is committed to supporting the continued activities of the GSEs in ensuring they have sufficient capital to honor any guarantees issued now or in the future and the ability to meet any of their debt obligations. Given the nascent state of our recovery, the Administration will take care not to pursue policies or reforms that would threaten to disrupt the function or liquidity of these securities, or the ability of the GSEs to honor these obligations. We recognize the central importance the mortgage finance market plays in the broader capital markets and we will ensure that this market is not allowed to be disrupted. Maintaining the GSEs' current securitization operational flow, TBA liquidity, secondary MBS market liquidity, and their ability to issue corporate debt securities during the transition will remain key priorities for the Administration. In his testimony before the committee last month, Secretary Geithner announced that we would be releasing a series of questions to solicit the public's thoughts on housing finance reform. In keeping with that commitment, HUD and the Treasury have today released a copy of these questions, and they will be submitted tomorrow to the Federal Register to be published for formal public comment. The questions are as follows: ``How should Federal housing finance objectives be prioritized in the context of the broader objectives of housing policy? What role should the Federal Government play in supporting a stable, well-functioning housing finance system, and what risks, if any, should the Federal Government bear in meeting its housing finance objectives? Should the government approach differ across different segments of the market, and if so how? How should the current organization of the housing finance system be improved? How should the housing finance system support sound market practices? What is the best way for the housing finance system to help ensure consumers are protected from unfair, abusive or deceptive practices?'' And, finally: ``Do housing finance systems in other countries offer insights that can help inform U.S. reform choices?'' These questions will help us consider what functions should be served by different factors in the system, the structure or structures that they should take, how they should fit within both our broader housing finance system and housing policy goals, and the best steps to get from where we are today to a stronger system. The public's input will be invaluable as we think through these difficult and complex issues, so we will take that input in two forms. First, we will ask the public to submit written responses to the questions. The Federal Register notice will contain guidance on where and when the public should submit their responses. Second, we intend to hold a series of public forums across the country over the summer, and follow this year to give the public an additional opportunity to share with us their thoughts on reform. Together, these opportunities for input will give the public the chance to deepen our understanding of the issues and shape our response as we move forward over the coming year. This is both in keeping with the Administration's commitment to openness and transparency and the careful, deliberative way that we have approached our housing recovery today. We are committed to ensuring that all the stakeholders around GSE reform are heard from. And, so, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bachus, and members of the committee, the Obama Administration is committed to building a next generation system of housing finance that meets the diverse housing needs our country requires while building on the nascent housing recovery we have established to date: protecting the taxpayer, and above all, ensuring we prevent a crisis of this magnitude from ever happening again. Given the challenges we still face, we must take a responsible approach to housing finance reform in which transition is not marked by hasty changes that could threaten another breakdown in the market, but by care and deliberation as we work with Congress to develop proposals, to support the institutional structure for the next generation of housing finance. In the months to come, I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman and the members of the committee, to make this charge a reality. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Secretary Donovan can be found on page 67 of the appendix.] The Chairman. Mr. Secretary, as I said, I believe there was agreement that we should abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and there was reference only to their lobbying power. I would refer people to Secretary Paulson's book in which he describes how he became Secretary of the Treasury in 2006. And he then describes the relationship he had with this committee in particular from then on, in which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not successful in efforts to slow things down. We worked with him, as he noted, and he points out that at the point when he was determined that they had to be put into conservatorship because of the serious problems, that he anticipated they might resist, and he notes that he checked with Members of Congress, including me, and was reassured that we would be fully supportive of his efforts. So from the time he became Secretary, he was in charge of this for the Bush Administration and as he notes, received pitiful cooperation other than what he was looking for, and so I think people here are projecting to an earlier period when they conjure up this image of an irresistible Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They had a pretty good run for a while, but as Secretary Paulson points out, in 2006, when he became Secretary, because of the unhappy consequences the Administration felt it encountered in the Congress at the time, he said he wanted to approach the Congress to reengage on this reform effort and most of the White House advisors said no, but he, at the advice of Karl Rove, went to the President. Mr. Rove told him that the President would listen to him. And he went to the President, got the mandate to make the changes, and was unable, he said, to make some very real progress that came too late. He was then obviously--it had been done years earlier. But from the time he became the Secretary, he was able to move fairly quickly, so I didn't want to put that one I think to rest. The question I would have for you is this, and you talked about it. If we were to abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and not do anything else, not legislate for the structure going forward, what would be the result, in your judgment? Secretary Donovan. Let me address that question in two parts, Mr. Chairman. First of all, if we were to do that quickly and the long run effects of that to the market--I can't emphasize this enough: I believe, given our strong actions around housing, we have made significant process, and I have detailed that progress in my testimony. But this recovery remains fragile. Let's remember that the loans that have caused the devastation to the GSEs to taxpayers were loans that were on the books at the time the prior Administration took them into conservatorship, and anything that we would do that threatens this housing recovery that would push housing prices down again will only increase the losses on those loans. And hasty action to quickly change the composition of the GSEs or to eliminate them, I have no doubt would further drive down this housing market and cause taxpayer losses to increase. The Chairman. Because we are talking about the sunken cost, in the current ongoing activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, new activities, new communities, are we incurring losses? Secretary Donovan. Every indicator that we have of new loans being made, given the increased fees that they have put into place, the higher underwriting standards, and the fact that we have seen home prices--Case-Shiller index up or flat, 8 months in a row--has meant that these new loans at this point appear to be high quality loans that will make money-- The Chairman. So, the ongoing activities are not causing further losses? Secretary Donovan. The losses that they are experiencing are due to loans that were on their books at the time of-- The Chairman. And apologizing does not make that obligation go away. Secretary Donovan. That's exactly right. In fact, hasty action would have the effect of potentially increasing those losses as well as putting newer loans at risk. So, let's be very clear here that while there were enormous mistakes made, that doesn't mean that the GSEs are not playing an important role in stabilizing the market. One only needs to look at the difference between the jumbo market today and what is happening in the market where FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac are providing credits. The enormous difference is in interest rate costs and availability of credit to see the important role they are playing. Let me just add one other thing. Going forward, I also believe that while there are very difficult complex issues in balancing the role that the Federal Government takes in the housing market, if we look at this crisis and imagine if you will, not having the ability of the FHA or the GSEs or other institutions to step in to the market, if we eliminated them entirely or at least eliminated the ability for the Federal Government to support the market during these times, I would think that we would have had a much worse housing crisis than what we have seen today at this point in this market. The Chairman. Thank you. There are plenty of seats, so if people would just take a seat--let me just say there are also seats in the front row. Some Administration officials who testify need more backup than others. Secretary Donovan comes to us with some knowledge of housing. The benefit of that is there are a lot of empty seats behind him, because he doesn't need 18 people to answer questions for him. So people should feel free to take all the seats and that would--let's get everybody in quickly, please, and take some seats. Well, this is not hard sitting down. Thank you. The gentleman from Alabama. Mr. Bachus. Thank you. Secretary Donovan, I think we all agree that the GSEs will continue to hemorrhage losses as the government uses them to support expensive foreclosure mitigation programs and advance other Obama Administration housing priorities. I think you are aware the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, has urged immediate attention to resolve the GSE's future. Do you agree that there needs to be immediate action? I noticed that Secretary Geithner told the Budget Committee recently that the Administration is not prepared to address the GSE's long-term future even though Chairman Bernanke told our committee that he believes the plan for reform should come as soon as possible, ``The sooner you get some clarity about where the ultimate objective is, the better.'' Would you like to comment on his statement? Secretary Donovan. I would say two things. First of all, if you look in detail at the way the GSEs are implementing their loan modification programs or other efforts, it very carefully looks through the use of net present value tests and other tools at modifying or reducing principal on loans where that will have a net present value positive to the GSEs. So I believe strongly and I think if you look at the details of it, the actions that they are taking on modifying mortgages are not only good for homeowners, but they are good for the GSEs and for the taxpayer as well. Mr. Bachus. Do you think we need a reform proposal for the GSEs as soon as possible? Secretary Donovan. I would say that we need a reform proposal for the GSEs as soon as possible, given the need to maintain the stability of the current market. As I said just a moment ago-- Mr. Bachus. When do you think--right now we just seem to be--your all so-called plan that was released just today, it just asks questions. I guess you're hoping that somebody else will give you the answer but-- Secretary Donovan. I laid out in my testimony, Congressman, four goals for the housing finance system, nine different principles that we see as critical. You talked about principles in your opening statement. We laid out nine principles in my testimony that we think are important for the system, and we believe that the public should have the ability to have input and to learn, to benefit from their knowledge about this system. We cannot move hastily on an issue as complex as this or as important as this to the housing market and risk a downturn that as I said a moment ago, could end up costing the taxpayer millions of additional dollars if you take a wrong step. Mr. Bachus. Well, let me ask you this, and I don't mean to interrupt you, but it has been 18 months since the Obama Administration took over, and these questions could have been asked 18 months ago. Why did it take 18 months to come up with a group of questions? You look at these questions; one of them just says, ``Do housing finance systems in other countries offer insights that can help inform U.S. reform choices?'' Couldn't we have answered that 18 months ago, with just a ``probably'' or ``possibly?'' Secretary Donovan. Congressman, we believe it is time to engage in a full and thoughtful dialogue leading to a likely legislative proposal that would get moved through Congress this year-- Mr. Bachus. Well we have had-- Secretary Donovan. If I could finish answering the question, please. We believe that--and we have been completely focused on healing this housing finance system and the housing market and the economy more broadly. We have made substantial progress on that and we feel strongly that had we embarked on this process a year ago, we would have put that recovery at significant risk. And so, we believe this is the responsible way to engage in a process on a timeline that is responsible in terms of making sure that American homeowners and the taxpayer are not put at further risk. Mr. Bachus. Okay, well, let me ask you this. There is time for action, the time for questions and dialogue--we have been doing this for 18 months. The Republican plan has been out there for 18 months; we have made our proposals. And here today to just ask some more questions, don't you agree that the time for just asking questions is over and the time-- The public has had input for 18 months. You could have asked them those--and I'm not criticizing you personally, but let me say--when can we expect legislation? That will be my last question. Secretary Donovan. As Secretary Geithner said in his testimony, our expectation, particularly given the full legislative calendar that you have, is that we would have full discussion with the public, with the committee, with the Senate as well, and that we would move to legislation in the following year that would reform-- Mr. Bachus. The following year? Secretary Donovan. I think--I would certainly expect it will be difficult to move legislation and complete that legislation this year. And we believe again, that the housing market at this point is fragile enough that we need to--and let me just be clear, we have taken substantial actions on the housing market. Just as an example, as you know and I very much appreciate the constructive work that you have done with us around FHA to improve the underwriting that we have taken--extensive actions, we have on a number of different fronts, whether it is ensuring low interest rates, ensuring continued availability of mortgage capital, keeping homeowners in their homes, helping communities hurt by this housing crisis. We have taken extensive actions on the housing crisis and on the housing finance system. We simply do not feel that moving in a way that could hurt this housing market further is responsible at this point. Mr. Bachus. Thank you. Mr. Kanjorski. [presiding] Thank you, very much. I know the gentleman from Alabama is careful with his facts and figures, but I just want the record to reflect that we can't count the Obama Administration in office for 18 months, unless I am radically mistaken, as the best I calculate is something like 15 months. Also, I think we--and the reason I bring it up is that we have just gone through a horrible example of misrepresentation of pertinent facts in the healthcare act. Having returned from my break period, I was overwhelmed by how much information, misinformation, and disinformation has been put out to the public over the last year on healthcare. I would hope we do not do the same thing on financial reform, regulatory reform, or housing and GSE reform. Let us try to hold to the real facts, and the facts are the Administration has not been in office 18 months, do we agree with that? Mr. Bachus. I would say maybe 15 months, I just say that is long enough to ask questions-- Mr. Kanjorski. Mr. Secretary, there are a few things that disturb me. We have, of course, a bifurcation of legislative responsibility, and we have some very important pending legislation that has been passed by this committee and the House of Representatives that seems to go to ``no-no'' land when it gets over into the other side. Do you have any insight as to what may happen on housing reform bills? I have several of them that are pending there. Have you had some inside information or intelligence as to what the Senate is going to do on those pieces of legislation, or can we just assume they are going to do nothing? Secretary Donovan. I am sorry, Congressman, could you be more specific about which pieces of legislation? Is this financial regulatory reform or other housing bills? Mr. Kanjorski. Well, as part of a regulatory reform we have included in some of the housing reform legislation in the House, and that is presently pending. However, the Senate bill does not include that, so we can assume that they have abandoned that reform in the regulatory reform bill. Then, we have a freestanding bill with the same information of appraisals, etc., and how we should handle that. Are you getting any insight as to whether or not they are going to move forward with that reform bill? Secretary Donovan. What I can tell you is the entire economic team has been working closely with the Senate committee. Obviously, they have moved a bill at the committee level and we continue to work with them. I can't give you any insight into their legislative calendar in terms of bringing those to an actual vote. Mr. Kanjorski. Do you see a possibility that we can actually strive to accomplish something here, as opposed to just having political objectives over the next 7 to 8 months, since we are in the silly season? Can we just anticipate that nothing serious is really going to transpire and that is why you are saying we have to wait until next year to get serious reform in GSEs? Secretary Donovan. What I believe--first of all, let me say that serious reform is not only possible; it is absolutely necessary. There is no question that we cannot allow the crisis we witnessed to happen again. That is why the President has been so focused on broader financial regulatory reform and it is why we are absolutely committed to making sure we have a housing finance system in the long run that creates the right incentives and provides the right opportunities. What I will also say is we are absolutely committed to having a full and thorough examination of these issues, and whatever the discussions may be in Congress about what could move or couldn't move, we will be moving forward with a thorough process which I discuss today to ensure that we think through all of the potential implications as well as the complexities of the transition from the system where we are today to what it should look like going forward. Mr. Kanjorski. Mr. Secretary, I am joined as a co-sponsor on a piece of legislation involving covered bonds commonly used in Europe but not in the Unites States. We are looking at the best practices around the world in creating a situation for liquidity and responsibility for mortgage market expansion in the United States, and we have not even held hearings yet on the covered bond bill that is pending here; the ranking member sponsors that legislation, too. Therefore, I just want to make the point that we certainly could not be adopting best practices around the world if we had not had the chance to consider that type of legislation; would you agree? Secretary Donovan. Absolutely. I think it is an area that is worth looking at, and in fact, we do have certain structures in this country already that are similar to and function similar to the kinds of structures that you are talking about. I think the issue is really going to be thinking seriously about whether a market of our scale and our sophistication can adopt practices like that in a way that they would be equally functional here. And I think there are some mechanical as well as institutional issues about whether in fact those examples are replicable or the right examples for here. And I look forward to discussing that further with you. Mr. Kanjorski. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. The gentleman from California, Mr. Royce, is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Donovan, in your written testimony, you lay out the four priorities for the Administration for a well-functioning mortgage market in the future. You say a widely available mortgage credit, housing affordability, consumer protection, and financial stability. And I think in principle, these are worthy goals. In practice, we found that these can be competing interests, right? So looking back, would you agree that too much of an emphasis was placed on housing affordability and too little of an emphasis was placed on financial stability? Secretary Donovan. I do not agree that an overemphasis on housing affordability was the primary cause of the crisis that we saw. I believe that the affordability goals lacked clarity and that too often we mixed certain affordability goals without either clarity or precision with broader mandates, and that for affordability going forward we need to have a much clearer set of objectives and mechanisms to achieve them; I think that is laid out in the testimony. However, I think if you look really at the facts of--for example, take the affordability goals of the GSEs. Our recent study which we presented to Congress on the causes of the financial crisis looked in detail at the full range of loans that were eligible for the GSE affordable goals; it discounted all of the high costs or riskiest loans. So just within the pool of good, low interest rate loans that would have qualified for the affordable housing goals, the GSEs only purchased about a third of those loans. And so what does that mean? That means that they were not forced to go into risky lending to able to achieve those goals. Mr. Royce. Now, wait a minute. Let me stop you there, because we had Secretary Geithner here last month, and he described how the GSEs used those goals to justify their purchases of subprime and Alt-A loans. He went over this, and over the years, those total roughly one trillion dollars. Now, many have attributed those loans to making up the bulk of the losses of the GSEs. Numbers that I have seen show that it is the vast majority of the losses. So based on Secretary Geithner's testimony and based on economists that have looked at this, they have come to a different conclusion there and they see the trillion dollars in meltdown that the GSEs were either holding in their portfolio or had guaranteed as a real problem. And he made the observation that the whole financial calamity started in this housing sector and it started with the collapse of Fannie and Freddie. Secretary Donovan. There are two things I would say about that. First of all, the large majority of the worst loans that led to this crisis were PLS Private Label Security loans that were not ultimately GSE loans. They did buy a portion of those but I don't think-- Mr. Royce. Let me ask you this, because I have looked at that--Countrywide. Secretary Donovan. If I could just--I don't think it is right to say that the GSEs led into this crisis, there were plenty of other-- Mr. Royce. Let me quote somebody from within Fannie who said, ``We went out and we bought Countrywide, and the reason we were doing it every quarter was to a send a signal to the market that if the Government-Sponsored Enterprises were buying this and putting it in their portfolio, and if it were half of their portfolio--these subprime and Alt-A loans--half of $1.5 trillion, that was then a message to the rest of the market to do the same.'' Getting back to my opening statement, my worry here is that what wilted on the vine here was the market discipline. And one of the ways that we ran off-market discipline and due diligence was that we implied a government backing and that we knew what we were doing in government when we put these goals out there and we said, yes, these were safe purchases. The junk that was Countrywide was held by Fannie and Freddie, and everybody else then began buying it, that is the concern I have. Secretary Donovan. And you and I agree Congressman, first of all, that those--you call them junk loans-- Mr. Royce. Yes. Secretary Donovan. And I can't disagree, were the primary cause of the downfall of the GSEs; I agree. And Secretary Geithner and I agree on this as well. They were an enormous problem and it was when they began buying those loans that we ended up heading down the path that we had. Where I am disagreeing--and Secretary Geithner and I do not disagree about this point--the primary cause of their buying those loans was not--and I think if you look at the record, if you look at the report we did to Congress--was not driven by the affordable housing goals. They were chasing profits; they were allowed to buy those loans-- Mr. Royce. Look, I carried the legislation to stop them from doing-- The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired. We are well over, and have a Secretary here, so everybody wants to ask questions. The gentleman from North Carolina. Mr. Watt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Secretary for being here. And I thank him also for being in Charlotte in my congressional district during the break, and for the very positive visit he had there. Mr. Secretary, one of the things that you said in your statement is that we have to do this GSE reform in a way that doesn't have an adverse impact on affordable rental housing. Can you give me a brief statement on the extent to which the GSEs if any, were involved in rental housing finance as opposed to homeownership finance? Secretary Donovan. I would say really over the last decade the GSEs have become an increasingly important presence in the multi-family markets with the--as we saw in the single-family market, during the recent, during the crisis that we have experienced, their role growing significantly as has FHA to ensure that mortgage capital remains available at a time when the private market had withdrawn. And so, it is a very similar kind of role that ensures that there is capital significantly available. In addition to that, the other very important role that they had historically and that grew over the last decade was providing equity for low income housing tax credits, and that is something that has been really eliminated in terms of their purchasing new tax credits since they went into conservatorship, which has been a major challenge for the rental housing finance market. Mr. Watt. And going forward, would you think that separating whatever the new model's responsibilities are for homeownership should be separated in some way from rental? Would that make our tasks simpler or would it complicate matters, from your view? Secretary Donovan. That is something in fact if you look at the questions that we are examining that we released today, that is one of the specific areas that we are very focused on, is the segmentation of the market; and I see this at FHA as well. What I will tell you is that there are significant benefits of having those two functions aligned, but I think it is an important question of how much they need to be aligned and which pieces of housing, rental housing finance and support, mission support, should be brought together. So I can't give you at this point a specific answer about whether we should keep them together, but I will say that there are real benefits to that. And I also think we need to look very carefully at the question of the more deeply targeted affordability and where real subsidies are needed, how we ensure that continues. And that, I think is more likely something that remains a mission of HUD at FHA rather than being mixed into the GSEs missions. Mr. Watt. You mentioned that you will, when you put these questions out to the public, put a timeline on it, and I--one of the concerns that I do have and share with my Republican colleagues is making sure that the Administration's timeline for getting responses to this series of questions corresponds with the timeline on which this committee and Congress is moving. When do you anticipate the cutoff date for responding for the public's response to the questions that you will be-- you and the Secretary of Treasury will be posing? Secretary Donovan. As I said, we will be transmitting them to the Federal Register. I expect that they will be published next week, given the time that they work on. And we would--our expectation is to set a 60-day timeline for responses on those questions. Mr. Watt. So you think it is realistic for this committee and Congress to be thinking about this as a next-year project to deal with the GSEs? Is the Administration going to have a specific proposal by that time early next year, do you think? Secretary Donovan. That is why we are setting up the forums that we talked about, in addition to the public comment process on the questions. Mr. Watt. When will those be completed? Secretary Donovan. Those will be happening through the summer and the fall, so I would certainly expect that the timeline you talked about to be able to have a legislative proposal next year would be one that we could work towards. Mr. Watt. My time has expired. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Hensarling. Mr. Hensarling. Thank you Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary. Forgive me, I had an appointment outside, so we may be covering some old ground here, as I think I heard you say that in your opinion, it was the profit seeking of Fannie and Freddie that caused their demise as opposed to their affordable housing goals. Did I understand that correctly? Secretary Donovan. What I was saying is that if you look at the facts about the broad pool of loans that qualified for the GSE goals and the fact that the GSEs only bought about a third of the save loans that would have qualified for GSE goals, I think it is pretty clear that the goals didn't force the GSEs to start buying the subprime and riskiest loans that ultimately caused their demise. Based on our investigation of the causes there had to be-- Mr. Hensarling. Then what did cause their demise? Secretary Donovan. I believe--and this is what our report showed--that the lack of strong controls on their reserve requirements, their ability to purchase those loans, and put them into their portfolio was--and chasing substantial profits, as much of the rest of the market did at that point in these subprime, highly risky loans was ultimately what lead to their demise. That is why I think it is so clear that as we think through this system, we have to be very, very careful about how we construct this blend that existed or how we replace the blend that existed of private entity with public mandate. That-- Mr. Hensarling. Mr. Secretary, I think I agree with something the chairman said earlier. I hope there is a consensus that this neither private nor public model has worked, that it has failed. But if you say that to some extent it was profit seeking of the GSEs, why is it that the Administration hasn't taken any action to reduce the portfolio limits, which have traditionally been the huge profit center of Fannie and Freddie? And as you well know, in earlier legislation we increased the conforming loan limits that has created, again, more revenue stream for Fannie and Freddie and created more taxpayer--why has the Administration not taken any initiatives in this regard? Secretary Donovan. In fact the requirement was for FHFA to reduce their portfolios, and we have--FHFA has begun reducing those portfolios along the lines that were required by Congress. So that is, in fact, happening. Those actions are being taken by FHFA, and--I'm sorry, in terms of your second question? Mr. Hensarling. It was portfolio limits and conforming loan limits. Secretary Donovan. The conforming loan limits, just to be clear--and we had this discussion before while you had stepped out. I want to be clear that what is driving the losses at the GSEs is the bad loans that were on the books, in the portfolio at the time they were taken into conservatorship. Every indication is--and obviously this depends on the strength of the housing market going forward--that new loans that they are taking onto the books, given the improved underwriting that they have implemented, the higher fees, and a rage of other steps, is that new loans are not the biggest risk to the taxpayer. What is the biggest risk, at this point, is if we were to have a double dip in the market, the market were to go in the wrong direction, that would have the effect of significantly increasing losses to the taxpayer, and that is why we believe it is so important that we take a measured, careful approach to reform that would not cause the housing market to be sent into a double dip. Mr. Hensarling. I'm not sure how careful it is. Certainly, the Administration is not rushing into this, I would say, having spent lo these many months still monitoring the situation. I think you mentioned stability in the marketplace. Frankly, what I see in the marketplace now is that if we want a mortgage in America, there is a 90 percent chance I have to go to the Federal Government. It is either controlled by the GSEs or FHA. I see taxpayers are hemorrhaging at roughly $6 billion a month. If that is stability, I think I might want to look at something else. I would hope that this is not what the ultimate Administration goal is, is to have 90 percent of the American people have to go to their Federal Government to get a mortgage. Secretary Donovan. So, there are two things I would say. First of all, again, we have to be very clear about loans that are on the books versus new loans that are being made. If you look at our expectations of FHA's new lending reflected in our 2011 budget, we expect to return more than $5 billion to the taxpayer based on new loans that we make in 2011. So these are good loans. But more importantly, I think we have to look at the fact that these loans that were made, if we do not stabilize this market--we have had 8 months in a row of increasing or stable house prices. We have had significant positive impacts on the market. We cannot do something that would cause this market to fall further. We are absolutely committed, and I couldn't agree with you more, that our goal is to bring the market back, and we have begun to do that by-- The Chairman. That is all your time. Secretary Donovan. --the Fed and other steps. FHA is raising its pricing-- The Chairman. The time has expired. The gentleman from Indiana. Mr. Carson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Secretary. First, Mr. Secretary, can you definitively say reform will serve underserved populations and communities; and second, how can housing and finance reform offer access to capital by as wide a variety of institutions as possible, including small business, community banks, and credit unions? Secretary Donovan. To go back to the chairman's opening statement, I think it is very important as we are engaging in this process--and this has been a focus of ours--that we look not just at the GSEs, but more broadly at the housing finance system to look at the impacts that FHA can have, the Federal Home Loan Banks, other institutions, but also CDFIs, other institutions that can--so I think it is very important as we engage on this that we do look at broad availability and access to capital. I think that in part can be through the direction we take with reform of the GSEs. But I think equally and perhaps more importantly, the creation of a strong consumer financial protection agency as a part of financial regulatory reform to ensure that we are offering safe products across the board, and that those are widely available, is a critical part of ensuring that we do that. So I do think as we move forward--and this was emphasized in my testimony today--that broad access to capital is critical, as well as ensuring standardization in the market and broad availability of entry into the market so that we get small businesses and others being able to participate. Absolutely important. But I don't think that we can put all the weight of that on whatever the reform process for the GSEs looks like. We have to look more broadly at the financial regulatory system and efforts we make there in financial regulatory reform. Mr. Carson. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time. The Chairman. The gentlewoman from Illinois. Mrs. Biggert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome, Secretary Donovan. Secretary Donovan. Thank you. Mrs. Biggert. It seems to me that the GSEs have exposed the fallacy of bifurcated mission or consumer protection regulation from the safety and soundness oversight. When HUD oversaw Fannie and Freddie's affordable housing mission, and OFHEO served as its safety and soundness regulator, it seems the result was a $127 billion and growing bill for the American people. Do you think that the--I'm worried that the Obama Administration is poised to make the same mistake by creating a consumer financial protection agency. Can you explain how the financial institution supervision would be more effective when one regulator has a focus on consumer protection and might potentially conflict with the safety and soundness? Secretary Donovan. I guess I would have to disagree. The fact of the kinds of loans that were made that led into this crisis--if we had had a stronger consumer protection focus rather than within the mortgage space having seven different regulatory agencies that had some piece of responsibilities for consumer protection--a single agency focused on that task--that would have made a real difference in terms of the lack of focus on consumer protection and the types of loans that were being made. I think there is no question that we also need stronger safety and soundness, that there was not adequate focus, but I don't agree that it was--the fact that those two might have been together interagency. I think it was the very disperse nature and fragmented nature of that system that led to the problem, and that is exactly what financial regulatory reform is intended to resolve. Mrs. Biggert. I guess there is the difference with regulators and OFHEO, not that seven regulators that were really involved with the GSEs. But let me just ask another question, and that is we need transparency. And the public I think really does deserve easy, accessible information about the actions of the FHFA, which runs the GSEs, and they need information about the actions of the Fed and the Treasury that are supplying the funds. Would you support legislation to increase the GSE transparency? Secretary Donovan. I would--first of all, I think that increasing transparency broadly is a very important goal that we have, an objective. It is actually reflected in my written testimony. I didn't talk about it in the oral testimony, but it is absolutely a critical piece of what we need to achieve with the new system. And one of the real problems that we had was the pricing of guarantees and the transference of risk was not transparent in the system. That included the GSEs, but more broadly within the market. And any direction we take with reform of the broader housing finance system and the GSEs must achieve greater transparency in terms of the way the guarantees are priced so that--and the risks that are inherent are priced. So more information, more transparent information, is absolutely a central part of achieving that. Mrs. Biggert. I would ask you to consider legislation that I have introduced. It is H.R. 4581, and it is for the audit by an inspector general and a report back to the Congress, and I hope that you would take a look at that. Secretary Donovan. I would be happy to take a look. Thank you. Mrs. Biggert. That would be helpful. Then, we have on the losses issue in a letter, February 2nd, from FHFA Director DeMarco. He said that since the establishment of the conservatorships, Fannie Mae has realized losses of $111 billion and Freddie Mac $63 billion. Now they have drawn down $127 billion. How much more should we expect that the taxpayer is going to have to expend before there is some decision? You have the-- The Chairman. The gentlewoman's time has expired. If you want, we will give him about 30 seconds to answer--remember, if you ask questions right at the time, we are not going to have time for long answers. But Mr. Secretary, in about 30 seconds? Secretary Donovan. Let me go back to something I said earlier in the testimony. The reason--the primary thing driving those losses is loans that were on the books at the time of conservatorship, and anything we do going forward to further strength and stabilize the market will lessen any losses that taxpayers have. And so it is critical that as we engage in this debate that we continue to focus on the broad set of measures that we have been focused on to stabilize this market with significant results. The market is still quite fragile, and so we must continue to focus on the immediate results of being able to stabilize the market, to improve performance of those loans. And what that means is going forward, moving quickly to reform, whatever we do, that doesn't change the fact that these loans were made, they are already on the books, and the losses are coming from those. That is important. The Chairman. Your time has expired. The gentleman from Massachusetts. Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Secretary for your willingness to help this committee with its work. I want to take the opportunity to focus on question number five that the Administration has put out here in its list of questions to the public, how should the housing finance system support sound market practices? The gentlelady from Illinois just talked about transparency, and I agree wholeheartedly, and I know in your remarks you have emphasized that as well. But I want to point out a couple of gaps in that push for transparency. The Administration has not addressed the problems with the rating agencies, and I think they help greatly. They are one of the factors here. They allowed triple A to be stamped on some very questionable loans, and to have that triple A stamp accepted by the markets as a credible mark, I think, and so that continues to be unresolved. And secondly, the existence of the over-the-counter derivatives market and the continuance of a black box model. Now the housing finance system, as you know, is greatly served by the securitization process, and if we allow this black box model to exist for over-the-counter derivatives, many of which consist of asset-backed securities of these mortgages that we are generating, and also CDOs that replicate the performance of these blocks of mortgages. How do those--the lack of rating agency reform and the existence of a black box model in over-the-counter derivatives, many of which are real estate related and housing related--how does that help the system support sound financial practices in the housing industry? I don't get that. Secretary Donovan. I think you raise two excellent points, and I would say just broadly that securitization can be an effective tool for raising capital-- Mr. Lynch. Oh, I agree. Secretary Donovan. --and introducing benefits broadly across the market in terms of more affordable lending and more affordable home mortgages for the American family. But without the transparency we just talked about with Congresswoman Biggert, as well as a focus on ensuring the rating agencies are accurately reflecting risk in their ratings, as well as the over-the-counter market, it is difficult to get an efficient and effective securitization market. Frankly, that is why, as you know, this committee has worked hard to get to an effective set of reforms as part of broader financial regulatory reform there. So I think it emphasizes, again, why broader financial regulatory reform is critical, broadly for the economy, but also for the housing market as well. Mr. Lynch. I just agree with you on that last point. The opaque and complex nature of the derivatives market, especially in this OTC market going forward, allows--it actually enhances mispricing of risk, and that was the root of our initial problem, and I just think we are making that same mistake again in this. But I thank you for your testimony. I yield back. The Chairman. The gentleman from Delaware. Mr. Castle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, just to follow up on the questions that were asked by the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Watt, on the timeline. And I don't know if this is a comment or a question, but I'm concerned about that. I worry when questions are put out and you wait for the public to respond and that kind of thing from a time point of view, but I think it is well and good, and I think the questions are fine and we should do that. But we asked the same questions of Secretary Geithner, and it is uncertain to me what exactly the final timeline is. I heard your comments that probably by the time this is all done, next year for legislation or something of that nature. My question is, is the Administration working on something now? It is fine to get all these comments, etc., but this has been going on for about a year-and-a-half, and you have been around dealing with it for over a year now. And I am concerned that we need to have some sort of final answers by the people who are going to be in charge who know a lot about this, and I consider you do. And I hope that is being worked on, even at the same time that we are waiting for answers to questions, etc. Secretary Donovan. Absolutely, and I didn't talk about it in my oral statement today, but in my written testimony, we have laid out a series of four key goals for the housing finance system, nine different objectives that we think are important to achieve. And we have obviously begun a process of putting a lot of thought and effort. These are not simple questions, particularly as we think is right and the chairman laid out at the beginning of the hearing, that you have to do this in the context of FHA, the Federal Home Loan Banks, and other pieces of the mortgage finance system, because what you do with the GSEs affects and is affected by what is available in other parts of the market. So we have embarked on that. We will continue to do that in a thorough way, and I look forward to a thorough dialogue of it with you and the committee going forward. Mr. Castle. My next point is discussions you have in your written statement and your oral statements--I think you have said here today--but the whole business of democratization of credit and housing affordability. We are all for being able to put people in houses if they can pay for those houses or whatever, but obviously those issues were a major factor in some of the loans that were being made, the no doc loans, etc., in some of the problems that exist today. I would hope that we are going to impose strong requirements, though, with respect to credit and the issuance of mortgages, not only with the GSEs but with the companies that originally issue mortgages to make sure we are preventing this problem as far as the future is concerned. Will that be a part of the consideration of what will come forward? Secretary Donovan. Absolutely, and I want to--just to give you an example of that, we have, within FHA, begun a process, we have implemented a number of reforms raising standards, particularly for the highest-risk borrowers and a range of other steps. It has to be. It is one of the central issues that led us into the problem that we are in, and I do think that we have, as I said in my testimony, too often emphasized homeownership at the detriment of rental housing as an option. But let me just say one thing. I think too often we confuse, in the discussions about this, the idea that somehow low- to moderate-income people can't be homeowners, and in fact, if the home is affordable to them, if they get a decent mortgage at the right cost, they can very effectively become homeowners and it is still and will remain one of the primary wealth building vehicles in this country. So access to homeownership done right is important across the economic spectrum. And I know this from my own experience in New York where I was housing commissioner. We had created about 17,000 units of homeownership with about 5 foreclosures. The reason for that? Because we ensured that families could afford the home, we ensured they didn't get piggyback or exotic mortgages, there was counseling that made sure they were prepared for homeownership. If it is done right, a broad spectrum of the economic groups in this country can be homeowners, but we have to ensure, as you said rightly, that it is done the right way with the right standards. Mr. Castle. You probably won't have time to answer this question fully, but I'm concerned about rental housing. And I think about apartment housing when I say that--and some of the problems they are having. I have met with Delawareans, and they are becoming increasingly concerned with vacancies, etc. Are you hearing more and more about that? Secretary Donovan. It is not-- The Chairman. A very quick answer, please. Secretary Donovan. Yes. There is no question in the multi- family markets, but more broadly in the commercial markets, that there is still significant distress out there, and FHA as well as the GSEs--it doesn't get focused on as much. I tried to do it in my testimony. That is a significant part of the liquidity that is being provided into the market today on multi-family to ensure that there is reasonable priced credit available. The Chairman. The gentleman from North Carolina. Mr. Miller of North Carolina. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My recollection from March of 2004 when Mr. Watt and I introduced legislation to regulate, restrict subprime lending to require that anyone--any lender make sure the borrower had the ability to repay the loan--my recollection is that was a lonely position, that not many people were supporting it. But I'm struck by how many members now remember that they were right there with me all along. My questions, though, are about securitization that follows up largely on Mr. Lynch's questions. One of the reasons the rating agencies ratings meant so much was there was essentially no other information available to investors for securitized debt, in contrast to the kinds of disclosures or procedures required for issuing stock, which requires standardized disclosures, waiting periods so investors could do their own due diligence. Typically, an investor would get a call saying, we are going to market in 3 hours with a collateralized debt, an asset-backed debt security. It has a triple A rating. Are you in? Investors are not real happy about the idea of going back to that, and the securitization market has pretty much collapsed. We have spent a lot of time in this committee trying to figure out how to revive lending by regional and community banks, but that was 20 percent of bank lending, and bank lending was 20 percent of lending. The securitization market which has largely gone away--I think the first residential mortgage backed securities issue is probably going to come out in the next month or two, and no one quite knows how it is going to do. Why should there not be disclosures and procedures that allow investors to do their own due diligence that is comparable to what the SEC requires and the securities laws require with respect to stock issue? Secretary Donovan. First of all, let me just say I'm not an expert on the SEC disclosures and I don't want to get into too much detail on that. I think it is important to have those discussions with those within the Administration who are most focused on it. Mr. Miller of North Carolina. But the-- Secretary Donovan. But I will say there is no question that transparency, disclosure, more information has to be a central part of getting to a more efficient and effective market. Information about the performance, there is no question, will be critical to a better functioning housing finance system. The other thing I would say, though, is ensuring--and this is a key part that you are looking at in the reg reform bill-- looking at what kind of risk retention is required is also a piece of this as well. It is information, but it is also effectively ensuring that those originating loans' brokers, originators, others--we ensure their interests are aligned with us as the public and the taxpayer to make sure that they have the right interests at heart as they are originating them as well. So I think information is a piece of it in disclosure, but also aligning incentives properly when you have securitization as the primary vehicle. And in fact next week we expect--I think it is Redwood--to do the first securitization. We have seen the first one in the commercial mortgage backed securities side. So we are hopeful with our efforts to try to bring the private market back. We had this discussion earlier. We are absolutely committed to do that, and we do see early signs that is beginning to happen. Mr. Miller of North Carolina. And have you heard the same objections I have heard from investors that they need to be able to do due diligence and not just rely on rating agencies and something has to change? They are not going to invest in asset-backed securities that were issued the way the ones were that caused this problem. Secretary Donovan. I have heard similar concerns. Mr. Miller of North Carolina. Okay. I yield back. The Chairman. If the gentleman would yield to me-- Mr. Miller of North Carolina. I yield to the chairman. The Chairman. --because the SEC has proposed some rules that should pick up where we started in our bill and that is relevant to what my colleague from Massachusetts said. I think one of the best things we did in our bill was to repeal these requirements that people rely on the rating agencies, because the best we can do is to tell people, don't get this false sense of security, and we did it where it was statutory. The SEC has proposed two things. First of all, a risk retention and securitization, and secondly--in the mortgage area--and secondly, no requirement of a rating so that they have to do some of their own and I intend to express our support for that. So those are two areas where we have in fact moved in this same direction, mainly--and this was bipartisan. The gentleman from New Jersey and I felt very strongly that there was this false sense of security people got from ratings, and they won't be able to get that anymore. It used to be required, and it won't be. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Marchant. Mr. Marchant. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I would like to talk briefly about the failure of the private mortgage insurance industry and how it affected the GSEs. Do you have an opinion on that, and has there been any study as to what the financial impact on the losses to the GSEs-- Secretary Donovan. FHFA has done extensive research in looking at the issue, not just of the losses that have resulted, but I think in some ways equally or more importantly, looking forward, the strength of the mortgage insurance companies that exist and still hold a portion of the risk on existing GSE obligations. So it is an important issue, not just historically, but going forward in terms of the risks to the GSEs, and ultimately to the taxpayers. So it is something that I think FHFA could provide significant detail on. What I would say is, it is important, as we talk broadly about reestablishing the private market, which we are very much focused on, and the Fed steps, Treasury steps, our own steps have helped to begin to encourage, we are beginning to see the private mortgage insurers begin to step back into the market so that FHA can begin to step back in the GSEs. And I think the bill we have before this committee to reform FHA and our insurance premiums is a very important step, and I want to thank you and the committee for working very effectively with us on that. If we can move quickly, I think, and get our pricing structures right, it is one of the most important things we can do to encourage the private market to return. Mr. Marchant. Has the issue of the 85/15 and the 80/15 loans that were being made primarily to get around the private mortgage insurance industry so that many of the loans made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were actually zero down loans-- because in fact if closing, they were obtaining a 15 or 20 percent second lien to put the first lien down, primarily to cut out the private mortgage insurance premium, and I guess to qualify them. Has that practice stopped? Secretary Donovan. Their underwriting has changed substantially on those issues, so yes, that practice has stopped. And I would say more broadly, we have been very focused at FHA on similar concerns about past products, as you know, seller-funded downpayments and other issues. We recently increased our downpayment requirements for the riskiest borrowers. So in a range of ways, we are ensuring that those kinds of practices don't recur. Mr. Marchant. I missed the hearing yesterday afternoon, but watched it last night on C-SPAN concerning the companies that are currently holding these same second liens and have the first liens. Do we have a handle on how many of the delinquent borrowers out there who are facing foreclosure are trying to participate in these other programs, where in fact the servicer has the first lien and the second lien, and that second lien is not anything more than just the downpayment? Secretary Donovan. We have a lot of detail on this and would be happy to follow up with you and your office with more specifics. But what I can say generally is for borrowers at risk--if you look, for example, at broadly borrowers who are deeply underwater, say more than 120 percent LTV--about half of those borrowers have second liens and that as you go to more and more risky deeper and deeper underwater, the share of the underwater debt that is made up by second liens increases. So the second liens are a significant part of the problem for those borrowers, and it makes up a large share, about 50 percent, of troubled borrowers. Mr. Marchant. Thank you. The Chairman. Let me go to the gentleman from Colorado, then the gentleman from Texas. Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is good to have you here, Mr. Secretary. Secretary Donovan. It is good to see you again. Mr. Perlmutter. Just a couple of questions, I was visited by the mortgage bankers this morning--they are on the Hill--and they raised a couple of points. Let's see how you react to them. One is FHA, which has gone from 3 percent of the market to 30 percent or--everybody is getting an FHA mortgage. They were complaining that the computer systems or the technology there is antiquated and it really is having trouble keeping up. And I think within your budget there has been a request to update the system. Can you tell us what is happening or whether you all are looking at that? Secretary Donovan. Thanks to Congress, we, in our 2010 budget, got significantly increased resources to invest in improved technology, and we are in the process of implementing that. I would be happy to provide you a more detailed update. One of the things I would mention on that is we are investing heavily generally in systems, but particularly in fraud detection and risk evaluation systems as well. We have taken 6 times more enforcement actions in the past year than HUD took in the 10 prior years combined. Mr. Perlmutter. Okay, good. Secretary Donovan. And ensuring that we are making good loans and that we are not allowing lenders that shouldn't be making FHA loans to make FHA loans. We have an $80 million procurement that is under way now on a broad range of fraud and risk systems. So that is one particular example of what we are doing. Mr. Perlmutter. Second question, second point. When I think the chairman carried a bill a year or two ago on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac kind of restructuring, we were talking about skin in the game and the 5 percent retention. We did get some resistance from the mortgage bankers, the independent guys who are really more or less agents, and then they sell the loan into the secondary market somehow or to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. And I think at least in one of the bills was a carve-out for vanilla products such as a Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA- approved loan document, a HUD form. When we started into the bigger bank bill where we were dealing with the consumer financial products agency, there was initially a section on vanilla products which I think ultimately--either we passed it out of the House or it got changed. Do you--what is the Department's position on, in effect, carving out from the risk retention component a 5 percent skin in the game thing if it is a vanilla-- The Chairman. Would the gentleman yield briefly please? Mr. Perlmutter. Yes sir. The Chairman. Because what we have is that we--the Administration had asked for an ability to require certain projects. That is where the vanilla came in. We threw that out so there was no-- Mr. Perlmutter. Right so-- The Chairman. What we have is in our securitization requirement, the expectation is 5 percent, but the appropriate regulator for each entity can go up to 10 or down to zero based on this. And while we didn't write it in specifically, the assumption was that a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage with a significant downpayment would probably be rated a zero. So that is what is in the bill. Secretary Donovan. And what I would say, I think it is a very important point broadly, and I think a piece of this is direct risk retention, but there are other elements that I think are important to look at as well that can align incentives at the broker level, at all different levels in the chain. So given the discussions that are going on, I think it is very important that we continue with the Administration more broadly. We have had significant conversations internally that we continue to discuss this and find ways to ensure that we are aligning those incentives at every step, not just on the--not just a loan with a risk retention requirement. Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you. I yield back. The Chairman. The gentleman from Illinois. Mr. Manzullo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Secretary, thank you for coming here this morning. I have a couple of questions, but let me start with this. Every time we open up the paper, there is yet another program to help out people who are underwater on their home mortgages or behind, etc., knowing full well the reason they are behind is because we have lost so many jobs in this country. In many cases you can take somebody's home mortgage and cut it in half, and they still can't make the payments because the job isn't there anymore. But then I read of yet another new program--I think it would be appropriate to call it that--that would somehow ``encourage'' private lenders to forgive a principal debt of tens of billions of dollars worth of home mortgages as to which the homeowners have negative equity. Are you familiar with that program? Secretary Donovan. Yes. Mr. Manzullo. What is that? Secretary Donovan. So what we have done with FHA is to encourage, as you said, private lenders to cut principal-- Mr. Manzullo. They would eat it. Secretary Donovan. Yes. Mr. Manzullo. All right. Secretary Donovan. And just to be clear, what we are finding more and more--the GSEs are seeing this in their own portfolios and as are other lenders--we are beginning--we are seeing increasingly that lenders are cutting principal because financially they will see improved performance in those loans and improved recovery. So this is something that is happening in the market broadly without any government incentives. Mr. Manzullo. That was my issue. That is a voluntary program? Secretary Donovan. Yes. Mr. Manzullo. So there is no official, for lack of a better word, non-bankruptcy cramdown that is being given to the banks to force them to do this. Would that be a correct statement? Secretary Donovan. In the program we announced, it is not a--it is a voluntary-- Mr. Manzullo. It is voluntary. Secretary Donovan. That is correct, yes. Mr. Manzullo. And the banks are not penalized for not participating in this? Would that be also correct? Secretary Donovan. In that--yes, in that specific program. Mr. Manzullo. The reason I say that is that we have been through these cycles before where property would sell for $200,000, say, in 1987, new, drop in value 8 or 9 years later to $160,000, $170,000, and then go up to half a million dollars 7 or 8 years later. We do have cycles in this country, do we not, where people who put on--put down relatively modest downpayments find themselves underwater from time to time. Would that be a correct statement? Obviously, it is correct, or I wouldn't have asked the question in the first place. Secretary Donovan. I think it is hard to compare what we have seen in this country, perhaps since the Great Depression, to the cycle that we have been through. The extent of negative equity-- Mr. Manzullo. And the length. Secretary Donovan.--scale of it is unlike anything we have seen since then, and what I would say is reducing negative equity is an important piece of helping to get us-- Mr. Manzullo. If I could-- Secretary Donovan. And that banks do, I believe, need to start doing more of that. Mr. Manzullo. Mr. Secretary, the other issue is, as you stated in your testimony, where GSEs were encouraged to buy Alt-A and subprime private crap that had been generated for the purpose of increasing affordable housing goals, and that it says that underwriting standards were lessened in order to buy these portfolios that really were not intended to sell to the GSEs in the first place. This occurred, I think, between 2003 and 2005. It is about $190 billion worth. And the issue there is--and I know you weren't there. It was a different Administration. But it is a fact, is it not, that even with that mandate or Executive Order or pressure-- call it what you want--is that GSEs still have the authority to say even though these instruments were never intended to be sold to us, that we could have imposed our underwriting standards and made it stricter in not buying them? Secretary Donovan. Just to be clear, there was a large pool of safe loans--not Alt-A, not subprime--that would have met the goals that the GSEs didn't buy. So I don't believe that the goals forced them to buy the Alt-A or subprime. They did so for other--our evidence shows they did so for other reasons, and that is what led them down that path. The affordable housing goals did not require them to buy Alt-A or subprime loans. Mr. Manzullo. Thank you. The Chairman. Let me just--to answer his question, there is no program anywhere in the Federal Government that I am aware of that compels any holder of paper to write down the principal. None whatever. The only thing we have done in that regard is we did pass, I think virtually unanimously, tax legislation--not out of this committee--that said that a homeowner who was a beneficiary of such a write down would not owe taxes on that amount. So that was an encouragement, maybe, but there was zero requirement that anybody who holds this write down any part of either the interest or the principal. The gentleman from Texas. Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you Mr. Secretary for appearing. A quick comment before I get to what was my initial agenda. We find that businesses--they do have an opportunity to write off losses by way of something called bankruptcy, and continue to function, as permitted. The unfortunate circumstance for most Americans who happen to be holders of primary homes is that they don't have that as an option such that bankruptcy can benefit them to the extent that they can maintain their residences. If you have a secondary residence, a tertiary, or quaternary, you can with those. Anything beyond your primary, bankruptcy can benefit you. But we don't have that for homeowners. Homeowners don't have the benefit of bankruptcy to the extent that businesses do. That is just a fact. They do not. And there are some who make the argument that it would be beneficial for homeowners to have the same opportunity that businesses have to reorganize and stay in business, and homeowners can do that to a limited extent with debts other than the primary home, the primary mortgage. And that was just a comment so that I could at least say to the people who are viewing this that there are other means by which we can achieve a goal of dealing with this negative equity that are not in place simply because the laws don't permit homeowners, people who have their primary residence, to go into bankruptcy court and save their primary residence. And there is more that can be said on this, but let's go back to the Great Depression, because it was during the Great Depression that we--I think is a good point of departure for us in this brief dialogue that you and I will have. We didn't have 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. We had 3- to 5-year mortgages. People would refinance and refinance again. And it is the evolution through the years that got us into Fannie and Freddie such that we have 67 percent of Americans who own their own homes, and over 70 percent of these, of course, have mortgages, so when you say mortgages, they are buying. They are in a position to own at some point. And while Fannie and Freddie are not perfect, and while they have not served us as well as I would like for them to serve us, I don't think that we can overlook the fact that a good many Americans who have homes now, who are legitimate, hard-working people who have 30-year mortgages or some longer period than 5 years--they have these because of the evolution that took place with Fannie and Freddie. And just as we have friends and I have friends who would favor keeping credit default swaps and who would favor some sort of negative amortization in products, they don't want to end all of the things that created the circumstance, they want to make them work better. I think that there has to be a way for us to deal with this and not just obliterate Fannie and Freddie and do nothing, and that is my concern. The option that some seem to put forth is that of doing nothing more than ending Fannie and Freddie. A bad idea becomes a really bad idea when you try to implement it, and it is unfortunate that we have to have the good sense not to let that happen. We have to have the good sense not to let this bad idea become an actual facility to the extent that it exists. What do I mean? If we literally allowed for the departure of Fannie and Freddie--just overnight, let's just get rid of it--what a thing--this bad idea would become a really bad idea when the experiences that we would have to encounter would manifest themselves. So tell me, if you would, if we eliminated Fannie and Freddie right now, what would be some of the effects of doing so? Secretary Donovan. I think that the risks to the housing market and the economy more broadly would be substantial, and if you look at the jumbo market, other forms of lending, you look at the enormous gap in interest rates and availability of credit in those other markets, there is no question that whatever mistakes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made, which were substantial, that currently they are playing a very important role in stabilizing our housing market and the economy more broadly. So we do need to reform them, there is no question, and we have embarked on that process, but we have to do so in a responsible, measured way so that we don't end up doing more damage to the housing market, and in fact damaging the taxpayer through increased losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mr. Green. Thank you, I yield back. The Chairman. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Grayson. Mr. Grayson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is nice to see you, Mr. Secretary. What percentage of mortgages in the United States are underwater? In other words, how many households owe more than they own, where the balance of their mortgage is more than the value of their property? Secretary Donovan. There are varying estimates that are in the range of 15 percent to as high as 25 percent. About a third of all underwater mortgages, the estimate is, are close enough to being above water that with a few years of modestly increasing house prices, they should be back above water, but there are about \2/3\ of those who are severely underwater, typically beyond 115 or 120 percent LTV. Mr. Grayson. Do you happen to know what the percentage is in Florida and other hard-hit places, like Nevada? Secretary Donovan. They range as high as above 50 percent in the hardest-hit places. Mr. Grayson. For people in those circumstances, particularly the ones who have dramatically more debt than the property is worth, and in many places where there are a lot of empty houses--in Orlando, for instance, 10 percent of all the houses are now unoccupied. In situations like that, do you think that people should continue to pay their mortgages or should they just move across the street and start over again? Secretary Donovan. I believe that we have a system that depends on consumers paying their mortgages, and I would not, here or elsewhere, recommend to people that they not pay their mortgages. What I would say is--and this is why we announced changes and new initiatives just a couple of weeks ago--I do believe, the Administration believes, that negative equity is a significant problem in our market. Given the fact that we are seeing increasing write downs by lenders in their own portfolios, taking negative equity, I believe that it is increasingly clear to lenders that writing down negative equity in specific cases actually benefits lenders--homeowners as well as the lenders themselves, because they are not going to recover on those, and loans will perform better. And that is why we announced a series of initiatives that try to accelerate what we are seeing as a trend already, and to get rid of some of the misalignments. There are accounting treatments in a range of ways that currently I think we have financial institutions that are reflecting the value of second liens or other loans at unrealistic levels that will not be recoverable in a foreclosure or in other actions. So we are beginning to see some movement on that, and we are trying to accelerate it with the efforts we have under way. Mr. Grayson. We live in a market economy where we expect businesses to maximize profits and minimize losses. Why would we expect anything different from consumers, and in particular, homeowners? Why would we expect them to keep paying on a mortgage where the mortgage value is far more than the value of the property that underlies the mortgage? Secretary Donovan. I think--and this is one of the reasons I work in housing--a home is much more than an investment, and they are--those are complex decisions that involve negative impacts to families themselves in terms of their credit, displacement of families and children. There is a whole--it is a very complex set of decisions that a family makes when they buy a home or when they decide to give up a home. So I don't think it is as simple as saying that this is a purely rational economic decision that is only based on investment rather than the other values of a home. Mr. Grayson. My own impression--and you can correct me if I'm wrong--is that for at least 90 percent of the people in that particular circumstance where they owe more than they own, there is no policy of the Federal Government at this point that has, in any way, ameliorated their problems. Is that a fair statement? Secretary Donovan. I don't think that is a fair statement, actually. First of all, a significant number of those homeowners, if they remain and pay about a third, based on our estimates, will be above water within a few years. Second, we have taken a series of steps with the announcements, changes to our modification program that prioritized principal reduction, the FHA refinancing effort that we talked about earlier, those are all efforts to try to attack the problem of negative equity, recognizing that we cannot nor should we put the burden of writing down that negative equity on the taxpayer. We would be talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, and those losses must remain and should remain the responsibility of the private lenders who made those loans to absorb the bulk of the losses. Mr. Grayson. My time is up. The Chairman. Your time has expired. Mr. Grayson. Thank you. The Chairman. The gentlewoman from California. Ms. Waters. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here today. I know this hearing is focused on housing finance. I want to talk a little bit about CDBG and section 108. In some ways, it is connected to housing finance because CDBG funds can be used to help fund housing and section 108 is more on the economic development side, but it is used to support maybe Choice Communities. I know that is an initiative that you have put a lot of time in on. I have been concerned about CDBG for quite some time. I know that you have some ideas about some reform in CDBG. And I and some other members of this committee are concerned about the various ways that CDBG funds are used in cities that do not inure to the benefit oftentimes of those who we intend to benefit of it. Many of us believe that CDBG funds are used almost like campaign funds out of the back pockets of local elected officials who find ways to get the money to those groups and organizations that basically are their supporters rather than plans that actually deal with providing a combination of housing opportunities and/or support opportunities for families, etc., etc. And of course CDBG has been revamped, cut back in ways that I don't think really accomplishes economic development. And I also understand from my staff that you are envisioning some kind of fee for use of section 108 funds. So could you relate to both CDBG and section 108 a bit around those concerns? Secretary Donovan. Just to start with the section 108 program, it has been an effective program, it has expanded, the use of it has expanded significantly, and as I think you have seen us do in a range of different areas in FHA and elsewhere, the proposal was to, now that we have a real history with 108, to be able to understand the true costs of the guarantees and to begin to set a pricing for that to reflect the actual performance of the loans so that the program effectively pays for itself rather than requiring appropriations. So that is what we had proposed for 108. And given the strong performance of it, it is a pretty modest fee. On CDBG, more broadly what I would say is that it has been critical for us to improve oversight of the program. I don't think the kinds of things you have talked about are widespread in the program. However, where we have seen examples that CDBG funds have not been used appropriately, we have stepped up the actions that we are taking. We would be happy to give you more details on that. But I think CDBG is an important resource in many communities and we believe, particularly given the economic crisis that we have seen, that having a tool that can attack economic development and create jobs is important, but I would be happy to talk to you about further improvements that you think are necessary. Ms. Waters. Okay, my time basically is up, so I will be happy to talk with you further about both of those programs. The Chairman. Thank you for your testimony, and we will now call the next panel. Secretary Donovan. Thank you. Ms. Waters. [presiding] Thank you very much. I would like to call up our second panel: Mr. Anthony T. Reed, executive vice president, Capital Markets, SunTrust Mortgage, Incorporated, on behalf of the Financial Services Roundtable; Ms. Sheila Crowley, president and chief executive efficer, National Low Income Housing Coalition; Mr. Alex J. Pollock, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Mr. Jack E. Hopkins, president and chief executive officer, CorTrust Bank, NA, on behalf of the Independent Community Bankers of America; Mr. Thomas Gleason, executive director, MassHousing; Mr. Anthony M. Randazzo, director of economic research, Reason Foundation; and Mr. Rick Judson, third vice chairman, National Association of Home Builders. Okay. We will start with Mr. Reed. STATEMENT OF ANTHONY T. REED, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CAPITAL MARKETS, SUNTRUST MORTGAGE, INCORPORATED, ON BEHALF OF THE FINANCIAL SERVICES ROUNDTABLE Mr. Reed. Thank you. Madam Chairwoman and members of the committee, my name is Anthony T. Reed. I am the executive vice president for capital markets with SunTrust Mortgage. I am appearing today on behalf of the Housing Policy Council of The Financial Services Roundtable. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the future of the housing finance system. Today, I would like to focus my remarks on reforming the secondary mortgage market for conventional mortgage loans. The secondary mortgage market is an essential feature of our system of housing finance. It has produced a steady supply of mortgage finance for home buyers. The secondary mortgage market has permitted the development of products with unique benefits to U.S. borrowers, such as the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. For many years, and even throughout the financial crisis, the GSEs facilitated this market efficiently and effectively. Yet, the crisis has revealed several fundamental flaws. Correcting these flaws presents Congress with an opportunity to make significant improvements in the operation of the secondary market that will benefit homeowners in the economy. Reform should be based upon the following three principles. First, reform should continue to ensure a steady flow of reasonably priced housing finance for borrowers and should not disrupt the economic recovery. Second, reform should minimize risk to taxpayers. Third, reform should include some flow of funding to affordable housing. The housing policy council proposes to achieve these goals in the following ways. First, creation of federally chartered but privately owned mortgage securities insurance companies or MSICs to perform the credit enhancement function currently performed by the GSEs; second, a strong Federal regulator; third, the establishment of a single MBS issuance facility to create and administer mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the MSICs; fourth, in exchange for their Federal charter, MSICs would be required to contribute a stream of revenue to State and local housing finance agencies to support competitively- evaluated affordable housing programs. Finally, the recent financial crisis has demonstrated that the Federal Government is fully capable of performing the liquidity function in times of market stress. Therefore, any successors to the GSEs should not be required or permitted to maintain large portfolios. MSICs would not be backed by the Federal Government. And I would like to repeat not be backed by the Federal Government. However, the Federal Government should provide an explicit backup guarantee on MBS still insured by the MSICs. To be clear, this catastrophic guarantee would not apply to the MSICs themselves. It would only apply to the MBS that they guarantee. This exquisite guarantee for MBS is needed to give a broad range of MBS investors confidence in these securities and to help ensure consistent and reasonably priced mortgage finance to borrowers. The government's guarantee should cover interest and principal payments on MBS only after all private capital backing and MBS is exhausted. And MSIC would pay a fee to the government for the government guarantee, and the fees paid by all MSICs would be placed in reserve that would provide an additional buffer between private capital and the Federal guarantee. In total, the layers of private capital standing before the government's guarantee would be downpayments made by homebuyers, private mortgage insurance, shareholders equity in the MSICs, and the reserve fund. Moreover, this explicit guarantee is intended to be budget neutral. MSICs should be required to transfer a percentage of revenue to affordable housing programs, much like the Federal Home Loan Banks do today. The current numerical housing goal should be ended. The funds for affordable housing could be contributed under a competitive grant program similar to the FHLB program, or it could be transferred to HUD for subsequent distribution to State and local housing finance agencies. We also called for the creation of a single MBS issuance facility to perform the securitization function. This issuance facility would support the creation of a single MBS. Today, there are some differences between the MBS marketed by the two GSEs, which can from time to time impair market liquidity. All MSICs should be required to adhere to a standard form of MBS that has the same terms and conditions in order to promote investor understanding of the MBS. This would help ensure homebuyers consistent access to reasonably priced home finance. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the future of mortgage finance. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. [The prepared statement of Mr. Reed can be found on page 114 of the appendix.] Ms. Waters. Thank you very much. Ms. Sheila Crowley? STATEMENT OF SHEILA CROWLEY, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL LOW INCOME HOUSING COALITION Ms. Crowley. Good morning, Ms. Waters, Mr. Hensarling and other members of the committee. I am Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The Coalition is dedicated solely to achieving socially just public policy that assures people with the lowest incomes in the United States have affordable and decent homes; thus, we are interested in the topic of today's hearing, because the housing finance system in the United States has failed miserably in assuring enough housing for all Americans and any reform that Congress undertakes must address this serious shortcoming. In the United States today, there are 9.2 million extremely low-income renter households, and only 6.1 million rental homes available that they can afford--71 percent of extremely low- income renter households pay more than half of their income for their housing. That's an unacceptable situation. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis, some will assert that we have an excess supply of housing; and, while that may be the case for high- cost housing, the supply of low-cost rental housing continues to dwindle. Moreover, rents continue to rise. The Coalition's annual study of housing costs called, ``Out Of Reach'' will show that the 2010 national housing wage, that is, the hourly wage that a full-time worker must earn in order to afford a two-bedroom rental home is $18.44 an hour. That is up from $17.84 an hour in 2009. A stable home is the platform for success and all other spheres of individual and family life, and all the other interventions we devise to help low- income people improve their social and economic well-being. Or, if not, if we do not first make sure they have safety in affordable homes, given this understanding of the housing crisis today, we offer several principles to guide reform of the housing finance system in the United States. One, Federal subsidies to the housing sector should be directed to meeting the needs of those with the most serious housing problems first. In Fiscal Year 2009, the Federal Government spent $300 billion to support housing--80 percent of that subsidized homeownership, primarily with tax deductions, and the remaining 20 percent supported rental housing primarily through the HUD budget. A truer picture of the Federal commitment to housing would also count the nearly $2 trillion in support for mortgage credit and other insurance through FHA, Ginnie Mae, the VA, Rural Housing Services, the Flood Insurance Program, Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Home Loan Banks. Despite this considerable Federal involvement in the housing sector, we have a persistent structural deficit of housing that the lowest- income people can afford. Clearly, subsidies are not being directed to where they are needed and where they could do the most good. Second, all segments of the housing finance sector have a duty to contribute to solving the most serious housing problems. Some would argue that the conflicting goals of maximizing profits and serving a public purpose contributed to the downfall of Fannie and Freddie. We would argue that housing, like healthcare, is so essential to human well-being that any profit-seeking enterprise must be grounded by social responsibility that is assured by government regulation. In 1992, Congress directed Fannie and Freddie to take a more active role in ensuring the availability of affordable housing by establishing affordable housing goals. In July 2008, Congress added a further affordable housing obligation in the form of contributions to the National Housing Trust Fund, which was designed specifically to address the shortage of rental housing. Whatever form Fannie and Freddie or their successors take in the future the obligation to contribute to the National Housing Trust Fund must be renewed and expanded. And, further, we think all federally regulated financial institutions should be required to make similar contributions. Third, Federal policy should not favor one form of tenure over another. Rather, Federal policy should incentivize balance in the housing market and the full range of housing choices in every community. Federal policy clearly favors homeownership of rental housing as indicated by the skewed nature of Federal housing subsidies. A more balanced Federal housing policy would make sure that rental housing enjoys the same advantages as homeownership in lending and in the tax code. Assuring that all members of a given community have homes they can afford in the neighborhood of their choosing will also require strict enforcement of fair housing laws and the full implementation of the duty to affirmatively further fair housing is a condition of receiving direct and indirect Federal subsidies. I will close with three specific suggestions for dedicating funding sources for the National Housing Trust Fund that will help us take the trust fund to the scale that we recommend: at least $15 billion a year for 10 years. These are things Congress could do right away. First, the Federal Government provides private financial institutions with low-cost funds through a variety of sources--a 5 percent basis point annual fee on outstanding low-cost funding balances could raise several billion dollars a year for the trust fund; second, Congress should levy a fee on the securitization of mortgages by any capital markets participant; and third, homeowners can gain a tax deduction for capital gains on the sale of their homes, a surcharge on the percentage of capital gains that a seller realizes at the time of sale would generate several billion dollars. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Ms. Crowley can be found on page 61 of the appendix.] Ms. Waters. Thank you very much. Mr. Pollock? STATEMENT OF ALEX J. POLLOCK, RESIDENT FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Mr. Pollock. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, Congressman Hensarling, and members of the committee. I would like to propose for your consideration seven steps toward sound mortgage finance in the future for the United States. These are: to create a private secondary market for prime conforming mortgage loans; to transition to a world of no GSEs; to facilitate, but not require, risk retention by mortgage originators; to develop countercyclical strategies; should there be surviving GSEs, in spite of my previous recommendation, to ensure that we do not use government insured banks to promote the financing of the GSEs; to develop clear, straightforward key information for borrowers; and to reintroduce savings as an explicit goal of mortgage finance. I'll expand briefly on three of these points. First, a private, secondary market for prime mortgages of conforming size should have been a natural market development. Why did it never happen? It never happened because no private entity could compete with the government granted advantages of the GSEs. There could be no private prime conforming mortgage market while the GSEs used their advantages, both to make private competition impossible and to extract duopoly profits or economic rents from the private parties. This element of the old housing finance system should not survive. Second, we should structure a transition to a world of no GSEs. I would like to commend Congressman Hensarling's bill, which he mentioned earlier, for suggesting how this might be done and how an orderly transition might actually be put in gear. Housing finance inflation was at the center of the financial crisis, and the GSEs were at the center of housing finance inflation. No mortgage system reform can be meaningful, which fails to address Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Everyone now agrees with this. In my view, this is the core issue: you can be a private company with market discipline, or you can be part of the government with government discipline of which there are many kinds, but you can't be both. Fannie and Freddie or parts of Fannie and Freddie should become one or the other. This desired transition is somewhat easier now, because Fannie and Freddie are not now GSEs. They are government housing banks owned almost entirely and controlled entirely by the government. Therefore, in my opinion, it's quite clear that as recommended by the Congressional Budget Office, they should be on the Federal budget. They should not get off balance sheet accounting treatment, which comes in for so much criticism in other areas. In this context, I would also like to commend Congressman Garrett's bill, H.R. 4653, the Accurate Accounting of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Act. Third, we should develop countercyclical loan to value (LTV) requirements. Financial cycles, particularly in real estate, are inevitable, but they could be moderated by developing countercyclical elements of the mortgage system. Bubbles involve an unstable positive feedback loop between asset prices and credit availability. As asset prices inflate higher and higher in a boom, the risk of loans appears to be growing less when it's in fact greatly increasing. As asset prices go further and further above their trend, the risk of their fall and the risk of the loans is becoming greater and greater. The logical and necessary thing to do is reduce the amount being lent against the current market price of the asset. But what generally happens, and always happens in a bubble, is the exact opposite. With increasing optimism, LTVs rise instead of being reduced. We need to create a mortgage finance system in which LTVs fall and downpayments rise as asset prices inflate. Then we would have countercyclical LTVs. Congressman Foster, in a very interesting draft paper, has proposed some straightforward mathematical ways that inflating asset prices might define requirements for lower LTVs. It's clear that something along these lines would be extremely beneficial for our future mortgage system, and we ought to figure out how to do it. I would be happy to address any of the other proposals discussed in my written testimony, and I thank you again for the chance to share these views. [The prepared statement of Mr. Pollock can be found on page 100 of the appendix.] Ms. Waters. Thank you very much. Mr. Hopkins? STATEMENT OF JACK E. HOPKINS, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CORTRUST BANK, N.A., ON BEHALF OF THE INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY BANKERS OF AMERICA (ICBA) Mr. Hopkins. Madam Chairwoman, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the future of housing finance. My name is Jack Hopkins, and I'm the president and CEO of CorTrust Bank, a $600 million community bank located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I am pleased to testify today on behalf of ICBA and its 5,000 members nationwide. The housing GSEs are very important to community banks. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provide a reliable secondary market for residential mortgage loans, and the Federal Home Loan Banks offer liquidity, asset liability management, and long-term funding. My bank uses all three extensively. We are a seller servicer for both Fannie and Freddie, servicing more than 3,500 loans with a balance of more than $400 million, and we have used the Federal Home Loan Bank advances to fund lending activities with $34 million currently outstanding. Were it not for these finance options, our customers would be at the mercy of the big banks and brokers for mortgage services and we would not be able to compete. That's why fixing the housing finance system and getting it right is so important to community banks. Our priority for this committee, either as part of housing finance reform or separately, must be correcting the injustice suffered by more than a thousand community banks when Treasury allowed the value of their GSE preferred shares to plummet when Fannie and Freddie went into conservatorship. Community banks invested in preferred shares with the encouragement of the regulators, only to have the rug pulled out from under them. Even former Treasury Secretary Paulson, under whose watch this happened, called it an ambush. In my opinion this led directly to the failure of a large number of ``too-small-to- save'' banks by wiping out excess capital and making it almost impossible to raise new capital. This was unconscionable. Restoring the $15 billion to $20 billion in community banks' capital value that vanished as a result of the Treasury actions can foster $150 million to $250 million in new lending and help in the economic recovery. And that is not an insignificant sum. I would like to thank the members of this committee who have spoken out in support of community banks on this subject. There is a wide range of proposals being considered to restore the housing GSEs and reform the housing finance system, and some would function better for community banks than others. We believe any discussion should begin with the fundamentals and consider what the corporate ownership and governance structures of the secondary markets should look like, and whether the mission of the GSEs is still adequate or needs to be changed. Resolving these issues is an important part of the reform effort; ICBA is still in the process of examining these issues and others. However, as the matters are sorted out, ICBA has developed a set of core principles we feel should guide the debate. These principles are spelled out in my written testimony, and I will highlight a few of them here. The secondary mortgage market must be impartial and provide equitable access and pricing to all lenders regardless of size or volume. The secondary market must have a limited mission focused on supporting residential and multi-family housing in all communities. The conflicting requirements of a public mission with private ownership must be eliminated. The accumulation of retained earnings must be an important component of the secondary market structure to help attract equity capital when needed. And there should be more than one secondary market to foster competition and provide better access for community banks. The functions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should not be incorporated into the Federal Home Loan Bank System whose focus must remain that of providing liquidity to their members. And Congress must ensure that the secondary market continues to have government ties. Whether the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charters are retained or a new secondary market is created, they must have some government tie to ensure continued, steady, and favorable access to the capital markets. Finally, I would like to address the importance of the Federal Home Loan Bank System to community banks. Federal Home Loan Banks have not been immune from the financial stress that has affected the entire financial industry. Yet, throughout the financial crisis, they continued to provide advances to their members without disruption, while other segments of the capital markets ceased to function. Congress must ensure that this stable, reliable, and resilient source of funding, liquidity, and other products continues and is not diverted to other social goals. For example, some are already coveting the Federal Home Loan Bank's Refcorp payments when the system's Refcorp obligations are satisfied. I understand how tempting this may be, but the Federal Home Loan Banks and their members, and consumers and businesses that they serve should not be penalized because the Federal Home Loan Bank paid off their debts early. These earnings should be kept in the system to build retained earnings for the system's financial condition and not be siphoned off for other programs. Thank you for the opportunity to present these views on our Nation's community banks. [The prepared statement of Mr. Hopkins can be found on page 84 of the appendix.] Ms. Waters. Thank you very much. Mr. Gleason? STATEMENT OF THOMAS GLEASON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF MASSHOUSING Mr. Gleason. Madam Chairwoman and members of the committee, thank you very much for this opportunity today. My name is Tom Gleason. I'm the executive director of MassHousing based in Boston, Massachusetts, and I'm testifying today on behalf of the National Council of State Housing Agencies, which represents this country's housing finance agency system. I want to thank Congress and the Administration for making housing a recovery priority. You provided HFAs with Federal recovery resources and did it in a way that allowed us to break through the barriers in the financial market. As a result, we are right now helping to fuel the country's economic recovery, financing hundreds of thousands of affordable homes for America's working people, and generating jobs and tax revenue. Madam Chairwoman, I especially want to thank you and the members of this committee led by Chairman Frank for your efforts to keep tax credit resources flowing over these last few years, providing additional bonding authority in supporting the Administration's bond purchase initiative. We appreciate your efforts to continue and expand several of these initiatives. Today, NCSHA calls on Congress and the Administration to require future GSEs to make a powerful commitment to affordable housing. We also recommend that Congress direct future GSEs to use the proven HFA delivery system to fulfill this commitment. We believe that a strong secondary market is an essential component of our housing finance system that must be preserved and strengthened, but Federal Government support of the secondary market is also necessary to finance affordable and sustainable homes and to reach underserved people. These public purpose obligations should be mandated and enforceable under Federal law and regulation, and not simply be aspirational goals. Some would argue that GSEs should not make affordable housing investments, because that is what caused Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's financial demise. We strongly disagree. Buying affordable loans did not get the GSEs into financial trouble. Buying bad loans did. Unfortunately, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both made investments in subprime and non- traditional mortgages that contributed significantly to their financial woes. But this shouldn't negate the sound, affordable housing investments that they made in housing finance agencies. These investments have performed exceedingly well. Further, while it's also true that the Federal Home Loan Bank System is experiencing its own financial distress, bank partnerships with FHAs have not contributed to it. In fact, recognizing the strength of HFA lending, Fannie Mae has entered into several exclusive arrangements with us, offering preferred mortgage pricing in terms. Fannie and Freddie have also purchased HFA mortgages based on their high quality, and several member banks of the Federal Home Loan Bank System have extended HFA's liquidity based on the strength of our portfolio. HFAs have proven over many decades that affordable housing financing done right is not just good lending but good business. We do it the old fashioned way: flexible but prudent underwriting; fully documented and verified loans; extensive homebuyer counseling; and a commitment not just to put a family in their home, but to keep them there. I would like to give you one specific example from Massachusetts, if I may. My agency's loan portfolio has a delinquency rate right now of 5.4 percent, compared to a 9.7 percent delinquency rate for the conventional market in Massachusetts. That's a 44 percent lower delinquency rate in our portfolio. Because of our proven track record, NCSHA urges you to turn again to the time-tested and consistently high-performing FHA delivery system to help future GSEs achieve their affordable housing mandates. We urge you to direct the GSEs to prioritize their relationships with HFAs in designing their programs and rely on us to carry them out. These public purpose mandates for GSEs will require them to integrate a dedication to affordable housing throughout their business culture and not simply treat it as an niche business. Capitalizing the housing trust fund from GSEs is essential, however, it should not be used as a way to allow them to buy their way out of fulfilling their public purpose mandates. Future GSEs should make low-cost capital available to support a broad range of housing finance for both homeownership and rental housing. The GSEs should have broad authority within prudent standards of safety and soundness to be innovative. They should be able to respond quickly and nimbly to changing market conditions and to take measured risks. Finally, NCSHA recommends that HFAs play a key role in GSE governance and have a seat at the regulatory table. This will ensure that GSEs meet their affordable housing mandates by informing those efforts and evaluating their success. I thank you for this opportunity to testify, and I ask that my full statement be included in the record. I would be happy to answer any questions that you have. [The prepared statement of Mr. Gleason can be found on page 80 of the appendix.] The Chairman. Without objection, any information that any of the witnesses want to provide will be made a part of the record. Mr. Randazzo? STATEMENT OF ANTHONY RANDAZZO, DIRECTOR OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, REASON FOUNDATION Mr. Randazzo. Chairman Frank, Congressman Hensarling, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to testify today. My name is Anthony Randazzo, and I am director of economic research at Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank that advances the ways free market can be leveraged to improve the quality of life for all Americans. There are two overarching problems plaguing the housing industry today: uncertainty about the future; and crippling price distortions that threaten to prevent sustainable housing recovery. Housing finance reform must be focused on addressing these two issues. GSE reform is urgently needed and a plan should be put into motion this year instead of waiting until 2011 or beyond. As I discussed further in my written testimony, there is a growing shadow inventory of homes, houses for which foreclosure has only been temporarily delayed, rather than prevented, and this is creating an excess of supply. If current Federal housing policies and programs remain in place, and the Federal reform process is dragged out, that supply is only going to expand in the coming months, indicating prices are artificially inflated and the market is distorted. The current policy of the Treasury Department, as Secretary Geithner has testified before this committee, is to wait until housing markets are more stable before reforming the GSEs. However, any such stable housing recovery will be artificial and susceptible to sudden declines, either from another bubble bursting, or from the emergence of a large supply of homes out of the shadow inventory hitting the market. Fannie and Freddie's support of the housing market, backed by low interest rates from implicit government guarantee led to rapidly increased home sales in the last decade, which contributed to the spike in housing values from 2002 to 2006. Those perpetuate and pretend prices turned out to be unsustainable, since they were distorted by boom and bust government policies. As such, fixing the GSE problem is necessary before a real sustainable recovery can actually take hold. Fannie and Freddie cannot immediately be eliminated, because virtually the entire mortgage market is dependent on them as a wastebasket for toxic mortgage debt, and this stems from the Treasury Department's bailout of the GSEs, propping them up as the main source of liquidity in the mortgage market today. But a strategy for dissolving them over the next few years can and should be created now. My written testimony offers some suggestions on how they could be wound down in a prudent way without shocking the market, and allows the government to continue its affordable housing mission to the Federal Housing Administration. Some specific principles for reform: First, Congress should focus on encouraging and fostering a sustainable recovery not bailing out homeowners in the near term. Waiting to reform the GSEs would perpetuate the boom and bust cycle and risk the creation of yet another housing bubble that will eventually collapse. Furthermore, waiting perpetuates the uncertainty in the financial markets that is largely frozen capital. Keeping lenders in perpetual limbo on what the future market for housing finance will look like and waiting increases risk to taxpayers. The longer the GSEs are allowed to operate in their current role as political rather than business entities, the greater the potential for financial losses will be for taxpayers. Second, Congress should support a framework for mortgage financing that does not distort prices. In order for the mortgage and housing markets to be stable for lenders to act more responsibly, perverse incentives must be removed from the system. Only when price distortions are removed and assets are more realistically and competently valued will private capital return to the market allowing the GSEs to wind down prudently. Third, there should be an effective framework for the private sector to step into the current role that the GSEs play in the market. It is important to note that Congress cannot engineer the exact means for how the private sector will innovate and engage the mortgage and secondary mortgage markets. Congress should simply design rules to encourage private capital as the main source of mortgage financing, avoid market distorting policies, ensure transparency, and keep taxpayers from shouldering risk. In conclusion, the housing market must be permitted to find its natural bottom, because that is the only real way to begin to fix it after years of distortion. While the housing market is weak is precisely the time to act in reforming the GSEs and promote innovation. GSE reform is not an ace of spades to trump all housing woes. Principal reform will mean short-term paying as negative equity and foreclosures get worse. But, in the long term, homeowners and businesses will benefit from a soundly valued market and access to growing private capital. Meanwhile, taxpayers will be spared the inappropriate risks and crippling debt being taken on by the government. The result would be a stable foundation for growth that puts America on a path to a sustainable housing market. Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to answering any questions you may have. [The prepared statement of Mr. Randazzo can be found on page 105 of the appendix.] STATEMENT OF RICK JUDSON, THIRD VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOME BUILDERS (NAHB) Mr. Judson. The housing GSE system functioned well for decades, but the past few years have seen unprecedented turmoil, to say the least. While we are here today to discuss the future of the housing finance system, one thing is clear. The status quo cannot be maintained. NAHB has had a strong and long-standing interest in the maintenance of an efficient secondary mortgage market system, and the role of the GSEs. NAHB believes that it is crucial for the Federal Government to continue to provide some type of backstop for the housing finance system. Such conditions are underscored by the current state of the system, where Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks and the Federal Housing Administration and Ginnie Mae are the only conduits for residential mortgage credit. NAHB believes a Federal backstop must be a permanent fixture, in order to ensure consistent supply of mortgage liquidity, as well as allow rapid and effective responses to market dislocations and crises. With regards to the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, however, NAHB recommends major, major changes, in terms of structure and operations. NAHB recommends creating private companies called ``conforming mortgage conduits,'' or CMCs, which would be chartered to purchase conforming conventional mortgages that are originated by approved mortgage institutions such as banks, savings and loan associations, mortgage banking companies, and credit unions. These CMCs would issue securities backed by those mortgages, which would carry a Federal Government guarantee of the timely payment of principal and interest for the securities and their investors. CMCs would guarantee the timely payment of the mortgages that are pooled in the government-guaranteed securities. However, CMCs and the mortgages themselves backing these securities would not have implicit or explicit support from the Federal Government. CMCs would be required to be well- capitalized, and to maintain reserves at levels appropriate for the risk exposure. The CMCs would also pay fees in exchange for their securities receiving the Federal guarantee. Those fees would capitalize an insurance fund similar to what is maintained by the FDIC currently, which, along with the CMC reserves and private mortgage insurance coverage, would cover loss exposure on the mortgages and the CMC securities. The Federal Government, therefore, would only be called upon to support conforming, conventional mortgage markets under catastrophic situations when the capital and the insurance of the securities insured and the resources of the CMC mortgage insurance companies' fund have been depleted. NAHB believes that the mortgages eligible for inclusion in these securities and in an explicit Federal guarantee would be tested and well-understood features in the well-known risk characteristics, including fixed-rate mortgages, standard adjustable rate mortgages, and selected multi-family mortgages. Such standards could be set by Congress. As this committee moves forward framing a new secondary market structure, NAHB urges careful consideration of the short-term and the unintended consequences that could occur during the transition to a new housing finance system. Any changes should be undertaken with extreme care, and with sufficient time to ensure that U.S. home buyers and renters are not placed in harm's way, and that the--efficiently and effectively, as the old system is being abandoned, a new system can be put in place. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Judson can be found on page 92 of the appendix.] The Chairman. Thank you. Again, as I said, I believe there is a consensus that we need to replace the current system. The question is whether that's all we need to do. There are some who say that's just--let me start with Mr. Reed. Would it be sufficient, in your judgement, to pass legislation phasing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and take no other legislative steps? Mr. Reed. Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. I think that would not be sufficient. I think certainly something has to be done with the existing assets. An equitable and fair solution has to be arrived at for the existing assets. The Chairman. Well, you talk, though, in your testimony about some other entities that you thought should be--let me-- Mr. Reed. Yes, sir. That was--that would be the second point I would like to make, which is in our proposal there--we do call for the establishment of a single utility that would be responsible for the physical creation of the MBS, the transformation-- The Chairman. Well, that's my question. Should we legislate them so that they take effect simultaneously? Mr. Reed. I would, yes. I think--to your point, I think one could start to build out the infrastructure that we are describing while the current GSEs are in process. The Chairman. Yes. I am concerned that if we them, and don't put that in place, then I don't know quite how we would carry out some of what they need. Mr. Judson, let me ask you a similar question. Would it be sufficient simply to phase out the GSEs and then take no further legislative steps? Mr. Judson. A transition to the new entity, whether that be a utility-type company or the conforming mortgage conduit that I referenced, whatever that transition would be, it does need to be a transition. And a dismantling of the GSEs would be appropriate, because they are not working under the current condition. The Chairman. I understand. And, as I said, I think the dismantling of the GSEs is not in question, and we have to deal with the assets. But we're talking about some functions that are not performed there, whether or not you can simply put them out of business and not have this new utility. And that, when people ask about the delay, the issue is to make sure we get that right. That's what we're looking for, is some kind of input on that. So, I appreciate what you said. Let me ask Mr. Gleason. What do you think? Can we just move to that, or would it be sufficient simply to phase them out as they--and you're speaking for the Council of State Housing Authorities, correct, not just Massachusetts? Mr. Gleason. Yes, Mr. Chairman, that's right. To your question, I don't think it would be appropriate to phase out the GSEs and not put anything simultaneously in their place. We clearly need a functioning secondary mortgage market. I don't think there is any doubt about that. I think dismantling Fannie and Freddie without putting an alternative mechanism in place would not be the way to go. The Chairman. Let me ask again from the supply side. Mr. Hopkins? Mr. Hopkins. My concern would be that if we didn't have a functioning secondary market, it would--without competition from the community banks, that the cost to the homeowners would go up. There would be no price competition. We help with the price competition, so there needs to be a functioning secondary market. The Chairman. I appreciate that, and I think while, obviously, the private sector we hope to increase and encourage that, my own view is that simply abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which is going to happen, without making sure that we have taken steps to facilitate, if necessary, the creation and set the rules of the private secondary market, it would be a mistake. Let me ask Mr. Randazzo. You talked about the further problems for the taxpayers if we don't immediately abolish them. The Secretary testified that the ongoing activities are not causing a loss, that the losses result from the kind of sunken cost. Did you disagree with his analysis on that? Mr. Randazzo. No, I think that's correct. I think that the future further tax losses will come from the fact that building a recovery on the way that the current policies and--the current way that we're funding mortgages today is going to create another bubble. The Chairman. I appreciate-- Mr. Randazzo. Eventually that bubble is going to pop, and-- The Chairman. And that's a valid argument. But it's not that the activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in and of themselves, are causing tax losses. Mr. Randazzo. The activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in what they are issuing right now into the--or not issuing. The mortgages that they are purchasing right now in their current portfolio, those have the potential, as the Secretary actually testified this morning, to actually have losses in the future. Those are the tax losses. The Chairman. Yes, everything has the potential. But the ongoing activities are not now causing losses. Mr. Randazzo. No, the ongoing activities--or the existence of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac right now, the--what they had before, those are losses that are leaking into the system. The Chairman. Right. And so no matter how quickly we abolish-- Mr. Randazzo. There will be losses, no matter how fast-- The Chairman. Those don't diminish because of that. Mr. Randazzo. Absolutely. The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Hensarling? Mr. Hensarling. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Earlier, I think many of you were here for Secretary Donovan's testimony, where he opined that the affordable housing goals of the GSEs played no role in their demise. I note that in 1992, Congress required the GSEs to purchase CRA loans as part of its affordable housing mandate. In 1995, HUD authorized Fannie and Freddie to purchase subprime securities, including loans made to low-income borrowers. In 1996, HUD required that 42 percent of Fannie/Freddie mortgage financing go to borrowers with income levels below the median, later increased to 56 percent by 2008. In 2004, Fannie and Freddie purchased $175 billion in subprime mortgage securities, which accounted for almost half of the market that year. And the record goes on. Mr. Pollock, do you believe that the affordable housing goals of the GSEs played any role in their demise? Mr. Pollock. Yes. Mr. Hensarling. Well, I could not ask for a more clear answer there. Let me ask another question. I have had a number of witnesses say that apparently we need government guarantees. We need some kind of GSE structure, and I didn't hear anybody talk about this in their testimony. But it appears to me, as I look at the mortgage market prior to the meltdown, we had a fairly competitive mortgage market in the jumbo market. We had a fairly competitive market in subprime. I look internationally, and I see countries like Denmark, who has--their housing prices have declined, similar to ours, but there has been no surge in delinquencies or foreclosures. They use a covered bond market. And, to the best of my knowledge, there are no government guarantees in that particular system. I see Canada has no housing GSEs. Their homeownership rate, I believe, exceeds our own. In Canada, loans are full recourse to the mortgage borrower. So, I just question, when I look at our own historic experience, when I look at international examples, I am having a hard time believing that somehow you must have a government- sponsored enterprise, and the taxpayer hemorrhage that goes along with that, to have a functioning secondary mortgage market, much less high rates of homeownership. So, if there is somebody who studied these examples and wants to push back, or--Mr. Pollock, yes, I will let you comment again. Mr. Pollock. I don't want to push back, but I have studied these examples with some care, Congressman. What you say about Denmark is true. That's an exceptionally interesting housing finance system. I gave a presentation in Denmark a few years ago about the American system of GSEs. When I was done, the CEO of one of the main Danish mortgage banks which issues their covered bonds said to me, ``Everybody always says about us in Denmark that we are the Socialists and America is free enterprise.'' He said, ``I see that when it comes to housing finance, it's the opposite.'' Mr. Hensarling. I appreciate that observation. I have also seen--I don't have it at my fingertips, but I believe there is a study by the Federal Reserve showing that the GSE benefit to the home purchaser was ultimately something like eight basis points, which means that, ultimately, maybe a purchaser was able to purchase at 4.92 percent, instead of 5 percent. But on the flip side, when you pay your mortgage, you are also paying the principal, which means that if you artificially increase demand, you might drive up the cost on the principal side, and ultimately you're no better off, because what you gain, which, arguably, is very little on the interest side, you lose on the principal side. And now, as I said in my opening statement, there are at least 127 billion reasons that the taxpayers would not like to see the GSEs maintained, particularly with anything remotely resembling a Federal backstop. Again, I ask, what is the necessity and what is the benefit, when we are a nation that is already on the road to bankruptcy, and Fannie and Freddie will obviously prove to be the mother of all bailouts? Mr. Reed, I would be happy to let you comment. Mr. Reed. Thank you, Congressman. To be clear, our proposal does not call for a continuation of the GSEs in the current form. What we advocate is that the guarantee, if there is one, be placed on the MBS, not on the corporate entities themselves, which I think is an important distinction between the ``GSE model''-- Mr. Hensarling. And who is guaranteeing the MBS? Mr. Reed. The MSICs. Actually, there would be several layers of capital. First, the home buyer's equity mortgage insurance, the equity in the MSICs, and then a reserve fund that we propose be in between them, as well. But to your point, it's an important question. Why have any government guarantee at all? And I think it is an important question. I think everyone would agree that--has agreed on the importance of the secondary market, as a means of financing the housing market that we have here in the United States. And I think--I have seen studies as well that have pointed to the past decade and said there has really been very little benefit. The Chairman. Finish up. Mr. Reed. But I think that might miss the point, which is over the past decade perhaps investors--and lenders, and everyone in the process--were not evaluating the risks appropriately. So, if you go back and you just use the past decade, and you say--and I agree with you, if you look at the spread between AAA, non-agency securities, and MBS securities, there has been a fairly--range. But the point of the policy, and the point of why Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created in the first place, was to ensure consistent access to reasonably- priced finance. And what you will see is that spread between AAA, non-agencies, and MBS could range somewhere--it has been as low as, say, 20 basis points. It has been as high as 200 basis points. And, in fact, the non-agency market has ceased to exist. So, if the policy objective is to ensure consistent and reasonably-priced homeownership, then we would advocate the most efficient way to do that is to put private capital in the first loss, and a government guarantee on the MBS, only in the event of catastrophe. The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Reed. The gentlewoman from California. Ms. Waters. Thank you very much. Let me thank our panelists for being here today. It is no secret that I was and I am a supporter of GSEs. I did not support and do not support the move to risky mortgages that our GSEs ended up involving themselves in. I think that the mission of the GSEs is a credible mission. But the fact of the matter is, as I understand it, our GSEs started to compete with our private mortgage companies like the one that was--Countrywide, Mr. Mozilo, and they were putting a lot of risky products out on the market. They were--actually, Mr. Mozilo was the poster child for the ARMs and the other risky mortgages that were put out there. And it caused Fannie Mae--even though I don't support the fact that they tried to compete with them for it. So, here you have a mortgage company like Countrywide and others which, instead of giving people prime loans who were deserving of prime loans, were giving them subprime loans and all of the exotic products that you could think of. So, you had a private market, you had people eligible for prime loans. They were not getting them. They were thrown into subprime. GSEs started to compete to get that business, and of course that has created all of that debt, and I think the downfall of the GSEs. How do you propose to have a private, totally private secondary market that could operate in the way Countrywide was operating and take care of our needs with low- and moderate- income would-be home buyers? Mr. Pollock? Mr. Pollock. Thank you, Congresswoman. I think the case is that with a private secondary market, Countrywide would not have been able to operate in the way that it did operate. Countrywide and Fannie Mae, for a long time, had a symbiotic, mutually supporting and mutually dependant relationship. There are secondary markets in debt securities of all kinds--in corporate bonds, in municipal bonds, in charge card loans--which are pure, private secondary markets in debt. And that's what we should have for prime conforming loans. And I think that market would work quite well. For loans which are non-market loans, that other part of the GSEs, that, if we wanted to have the government do it, should be honestly made into a government function, like the FHA is. Ms. Waters. So, I guess what I just heard was that the private market should be able to take care of all of the prime loans, the secondary prime loans, without any problem. Is that what I heard? Mr. Pollock. Congresswoman, it's never the case in human affairs--and certainly not in financial affairs--that we operate without any problem. We always have problems. And finance has its own problems. But it is my view that if the GSEs were not there to dominate the market, and extract monopoly rents from it, that a private market in prime conforming loans would operate quite successfully. Ms. Waters. And so, your preference is to transition to no GSEs, period. Is that right? Mr. Pollock. That is correct. Ms. Waters. Thank you very much. I yield back. The Chairman. The gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. Lance. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to you all. If we move to a private secondary market, as I favor--and, Mr. Pollock, you indicate that, as I understand it, you favor that as well. How about you, Mr. Randazzo, could you explain your position regarding that? Mr. Randazzo. I think it's important to understand that a private secondary market is going to look very different than what we have right now. Mr. Lance. Yes. Mr. Randazzo. And it's impossible for this committee, for Congress, to engineer exactly what that's going to be. So it's--for us to sit here and explain exactly what it's going to look like to the detail would be impossible, and would be unwise. What is important to understand is that without the GSEs there, there will be less distortions in the market, and there will be wider room for private capital to step into place, whether that's through the use of covered bonds, restarting securitization, or something that we don't even know or have heard of. Mr. Lance. And I presume it would be your position that the sooner the GSEs are wound down, the sooner the private market can be involved in this. Mr. Randazzo. Absolutely. As I put forward in my written testimony, the longer, actually, that we have the GSEs around, the harder it's going to be to let the private sector into the market. Mr. Lance. Regarding the question Congressman Hensarling asked Mr. Pollock based upon the testimony of the Secretary earlier today, is it your position that the GSEs were involved to some extent in the financial situation that affected this country? Mr. Randazzo. Absolutely. They were a driving force. Mr. Lance. I believe they were certainly one of the driving forces. There may have been-- Mr. Randazzo. Absolutely. Mr. Lance. --others, but they were certainly one of them. Is there anybody on the panel who disagrees with Mr. Randazzo and Mr. Pollock, and agrees with the Secretary? Ms. Crowley. Agrees with the Secretary, that the GSEs did not cause the financial meltdown? Mr. Lance. Yes. Ms. Crowley. I would say that the supposition that the requirement that the GSEs participate in the affordable housing market is--and that was what led to the financial meltdown is not accurate, nor any of the other requirements that the financial institutions engage in meeting social obligations. I think that Mr. Gleason said it best. It wasn't that they did affordable loans, they bought bad loans, and that those were loans that shouldn't have been purchased. There is going to be a lot written about what it is that caused the financial meltdown-- Mr. Lance. I know I wouldn't say the GSEs did it alone. I don't want to be interpreted as meaning that they alone were responsible. I think that's clearly inaccurate. I would say they, with others, but certainly not alone. Ms. Crowley. I would say that there is--we had a culture, a message that was permeated throughout our country, that homeownership was the preferred form of housing tenure. Homeownership was idealized to the extent that if you weren't a homeowner, there was something wrong with you, and rental housing was demonized and had a very negative connotation. And so, you couldn't turn on the TV without having somebody tell you how to become a homeowner, which would make you a better person, and how to do it cheaply, and how to get it--get that money very fast. And so I think that message, along with the availability of those kinds of very bad mortgages led us to this situation. And I think we all bear responsibility for that. Mr. Lance. Thank you. My own view is that the culture in this society is that we have far too much debt. The Federal Government is certainly a prime culprit in that regard. And the culture that somehow we can all get rich quick is something that, obviously, I disagree fundamentally. I hope that the new culture of this country will be much more responsible, fiscally, across-the-board regarding various entities, including the successors to GSEs, I hope in the private market, and certainly, ultimately, getting our fiscal house back in order here at the Federal level. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time. The Chairman. The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Watt. Mr. Watt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to direct my questions to Mr. Judson and Mr. Pollock. Mr. Judson, I welcome him, he is from my hometown, so I told him I was going to pick on him a little bit. The chart that you have on the back of your testimony deals with--all the way on the last page of the testimony, there is a chart that looks pretty complicated. But it seems to me to deal only with conforming, conventional mortgages, nothing--so I assume one part of your approach would be to deal only with conforming, conventional mortgages in the Federal Government context of any kind. Mr. Judson. That is correct, Congressman. Whatever entity is created to replace the GSEs, they would be conforming loans only. Mr. Watt. Okay. And so, if one would not qualify for a conforming, conventional mortgage security, the government might set up some external entity to help that person qualify, possibly by providing downpayment assistance, or getting them ready to go into a conventional mortgage loan. Is that correct? Mr. Judson. That is absolutely correct. That would help solve the problem that had occurred. Mr. Watt. I took it to be. Now, Mr. Pollock, the approach that you advocated for in your answer to Ms. Waters's testimony would involve solely conventional loans also. Isn't that right? Mr. Pollock. Congressman, what I was saying is for the market of conforming, conventional prime loans, which is, by far, the biggest part of the market-- Mr. Watt. And you think that can be done only in the private sector, without any government involvement? Mr. Pollock. That is correct, Congressman. Mr. Watt. Now, would you need, under your theory, this mortgage insurance fund? I gave you a copy of what Mr. Judson's organization, the Home Builders, have proposed. Would you even need the mortgage insurance fund part of that? Or what would happen if somebody defaulted? That would be just the cost of doing business for the lender, or would there be some mortgage insurance fund that would take up that slack? Mr. Pollock. Congressman, this diagram which we have here is not too bad, in my view, as one possibility for how private conforming loan financing might work. We wouldn't need the Federal Government guarantee on there, in my opinion, since government guarantees always call forth the leverage which causes them to be needed. Mr. Watt. So you would drop the government, Federal Government, guarantee part of it? Mr. Pollock. I would drop that Federal Government guarantee. Whether or not you needed a fund would be a matter of design of the system. You can certainly design private systems that have back-up insurance funds. That is a-- Mr. Watt. But without the government guarantee, it might increase the premium in the fund, I take it. Mr. Pollock. It might. Mr. Watt. Okay. Mr. Judson, how do you react to what Mr. Pollock is saying? Do you need a Federal Government guarantee? Mr. Judson. I think you do need a Federal Government guarantee. Mr. Watt. Why? Mr. Judson. To provide some security to the investor. Now this is for the mortgage securities. One of the problems has been in the past-- Mr. Watt. But if this is a private market situation, why do you need to provide that security? Why would the government be involved in this, if we are providing our subsidies or input from the borrower side, getting them ready for a conforming market, giving them--providing them possibly downpayment assistance so that they have an equity in whatever they are investing in from the outset, why would you need a Federal Government guarantee? Mr. Judson. If these are non-conforming or non-qualifying loans under normal conditions, whether-- Mr. Watt. No, these are conventional loans. Mr. Judson. The-- Mr. Watt. You said--that was the first question I asked you. This is a conventional market. That's the only way you get us involved, right? Mr. Judson. That is correct. And it's only at roughly an 80 percent level. There are three layers of insurance, we will say, between you--between the Federal Government and that investor. Mr. Watt. Okay. I yield back. I will ask you questions back in Charlotte. Mr. Judson. Okay. The Chairman. The gentleman from California. Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Pollock, Mr. Donovan and I were discussing earlier the issue of the affordable housing policies implemented by the Federal Government, and whether or not that contributed to the housing boom and bust. What do you think on that issue? Mr. Pollock. I think it did. I think housing booms are fed by credit. The more credit you push at an asset, the higher the price of that asset tends to be. As I said in my testimony, Congressman, there tends to be, in a boom, let alone a bubble, a positive disequilibrium feedback loop between those two factors. And, as Congressman Hensarling suggested a minute ago, one of the problems when we try to make housing more affordable by increasing credit is we tend to push up the price of the housing. We need to consider both of those factors. Mr. Royce. We are talking about the future of mortgage financing. But it appears that we may not have learned these lessons about the clear distortions in the market that can be caused by intervention by the Federal Government. That's part of the concern I have. Getting every American into a home was the goal. The GSEs were the primary vehicle for that. But unfortunately, today our economy is dealing with the consequences of that misguided decision, along with other misguided decisions which helped get us into this predicament. But, Mr. Pollock, why did a private secondary market for prime mortgages never develop? Mr. Pollock. Congressman, I think the answer to that is it never developed because it was crowded out by the government- advantaged market of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. No private market could compete with the various and very large advantages that the two GSEs had. Mr. Royce. So, we ended up with a duopoly and a certain amount of moral hazard that economists argue always comes when a Government-Sponsored Enterprise is presumed to have the government behind it. Let me ask Mr. Randazzo a question. Many have noted that the mortgage finance market has been unusually susceptible to boom and bust cycles. And let me ask you, what do you believe is the major contributor to this phenomenon? Mr. Randazzo. In the most recent boom, I think, as Mr. Pollock pointed out, credit drives a bubble, and we had both the GSEs and various other policies of the Federal Government, including the CRA, that fed into that--that helped feed credit into that bubble. And when you have a distortion of the amount of credit that's available, you drive down mortgage prices. When you drive down mortgage prices, it is easier for more people to get mortgages. That drives up the prices of homes, in general, and you create a boom. Without the GSEs or any government price distorting aspect, you are going to have less of a boom and bust cycle. If there is any boom and bust cycle, it would be a minimum. Mr. Royce. And so, what would be a couple of your suggestions for ending the tendency towards these pronounced boom and busts, anyway, that have plagued the market? Why don't you give us some of your suggestions on that front? Mr. Randazzo. Well, in terms of winding down the GSEs in-- over the next few years, I think that the first thing that you need to do is to begin to lower the conforming loan standards of the GSEs. This will begin to allow the private sector to step into--step in behind that, as the conforming loan standards drop, and there is more open space in the secondary market. And then you can begin to, over time--as the secondary market is taken over by the private sector, you can, over time, wind down the GSEs' portfolios and their MBS pools. Mr. Royce. And do you think, also, the Federal Government setting the interest rate at below inflation also-- Mr. Randazzo. Yes, and I think that's absolutely a critical part. What this committee can do to encourage the Federal Reserve to begin to increase interest rates is very important, because as long as the interest rate is set at an artificially low level, you will have a distorted supply of credit. And, in particular, I think as long as the interest rate is as low as it is, there is no incentive for the private sector to be lending money in the mortgage markets, because they can use other means to sort of ride out this unstable period of uncertainty, without having to use mortgage--use profit from mortgages to generate profit. Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. The gentleman from Texas. Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank the Independent Community Bankers. Mr. Hopkins, you represent them. I want to thank them for the role that they did not play in the crisis. I would like to drill down just a moment on this question of how the GSEs played a role in the crisis, because the products somehow are being equated to the institutions. It was subprime loans wherein buyers were qualified for teaser rates, but not qualified for adjusted rates that created a problem in the subprime market. Does everybody agree that was a problem, that buyers who qualified for teaser rates did not qualify for adjusted rates, and then these loans were passed on to someone or some other entity, the originator of the loan passed on all of the liability to some other entity, maybe GSE, but passed it on? And so, it was the product that created a real problem, in terms of the subprime market. And I would like to debate that, but I don't have the time, Mr.--is it ``Randazzo?'' Am I pronouncing your name-- Mr. Randazzo. ``Randazzo.'' Mr. Green. ``Randazzo,'' all right. I don't have the time to debate that with you, but I would like to debate at some point the question of the products versus the institutions, because the products were all products that were--came into being because of changes in the laws. The Alternative Mortgage Transaction Act, 1982 I believe it was, changed that--made it possible for us to have a lot of these exotics. So, it was products. But now, let's come to something that I did want to talk to a couple of you about, and do want to talk about in the--I hate to follow the same paradigm as Mr. Watt, but the truth is he and I had the same thoughts, so I have to pursue it the same way. Mr. Reed--not you, Mr. Judson, but Mr. Reed now--on page seven of your testimony, you indicate that the Federal Government would not back the MSICs. But it would back the secured transactions, the securities themselves. Is this correct? Mr. Reed. Yes, sir, that's correct. Mr. Green. Okay. So now you have the government as a backstop. Mr. Judson, you have the government as a backstop, as well. And, Mr. Pollock, it's your opinion that is not a good idea. Is this correct? Mr. Pollock. That's correct, Congressman. Mr. Green. And you would simply allow the market to function without the benefit of a government backstop with any sort of entity, whether you call it GSEs or you call it MSICs. In your world, it's the same, eventually. Mr. Pollock. For the prime conforming market, yes, Congressman, that's right. Mr. Green. Okay. Now, let's just see how many folks agree with this. Because at some point--I don't mean to put you on the spot, sir, but we need to get some sense of where we are here. If you are of the opinion that there should be no government backstop at all, kindly extend a hand into the air, so that--or let me just start. Mr. Reed, yes or no? No government backstop at all? Mr. Reed. No. No, sir. We believe there should be a government backstop. Mr. Green. Should be. Okay, Ms. Crowley? Ms. Crowley. Yes, there should be a government-- Mr. Green. Should be. We know where you are, Mr. Pollock. Mr. Hopkins? Mr. Hopkins. Yes, there should be a government backstop. Mr. Green. All right. Mr. Gleason? Mr. Gleason. Should be. Mr. Randazzo. There should not be. Mr. Green. Should not be? Mr. Judson. Yes. Mr. Green. Yes. Mr. Judson. Should. Mr. Green. Okay. I--the public is always interested in knowing the source of all of these things. Do you find that most people, Mr. Reed, that you work with in the industry--in the industry--are of the opinion that there should be some sort of backstop? Mr. Reed. Thank you, Congressman. The committee that I am co-chairing represents about 18 of the top lenders in the country, and mortgage insurance companies, and others involved in the lending industry. And I think there is an almost unanimous opinion that, again, if what we are trying to achieve here is consistent access to reasonably-priced home finance, that a government guarantee is-- Mr. Green. Mr. Hopkins, quickly. Are you with the bankers, or do you find that most people in the industry, who have a hands-on experience, what are their thoughts? Mr. Hopkins. Well, I think they believe there should be some sort of a government backstop on it. We are dealing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We have done it for many, many years. And we have very low foreclosures. On 3,000 loans last year, we only had 4 foreclosures for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So it can be done right. You have to use appropriate underwriting. Mr. Green. Yes, sir? Mr. Reed. Congressman, just to emphasize again, what we advocate, again, is not a guarantee of the corporate entities themselves. They should be allowed to fail. Mr. Green. Yes. Mr. Reed. They make bad decisions, they ought to be allowed to fail. But we do advocate some mechanism to assure MBS investors of what they are getting. Mr. Green. Okay. Mr. Reed. And-- Mr. Green. Thank you. I will have to yield back now. Thank you very much. The Chairman. The gentleman from Missouri. Mr. Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just two short questions. Ms. Crowley, as I struggle with the whole issue with the GSEs--and you have been around here a great deal--I am wondering if perhaps one of the problems is the mission. The two main missions would be to make a profit and to increase the supply of affordable housing. Do you see those as conflicting? Ms. Crowley. Well, I would say that certainly some people see that as conflicting. Our view would be that when you are dealing with a commodity that is so necessary as housing or health care or other things that are basic human needs, that-- and you're relying on the private sector to do the majority of the provision of that basic human need, and that there is a profit to be made from that, that in fact there should be some corollary social responsibility that goes along with that. And it would be lovely if everybody who made a profit understood they had a social responsibility, but that's not always the case. And so, usually that has to be regulated by the government in some way. Mr. Cleaver. Thank you. Ms. Crowley. Okay. Mr. Cleaver. Mr. Randazzo, my last question. This is more philosophical, but how difficult do you think it would be for Congress to eliminate Medicare? Mr. Randazzo. To eliminate Medicare? Mr. Cleaver. Yes, sir. Mr. Randazzo. I think it would be difficult, though probably needed. Mr. Cleaver. How difficult do you believe it would be to eliminate the GSEs, or some kind of a backstop? Mr. Randazzo. Difficult, but it would be easier. Mr. Cleaver. Easier than Medicare? Mr. Randazzo. Easier. I think it's absolutely doable, if-- with the principle that the mortgage market is going to change. The secondary mortgage market would not look the same as it is today, with the GSEs. Mr. Cleaver. Yes. Of course, you could explain all the things that would happen in Medicare, as well. Mr. Randazzo. Sure. But the-- Mr. Cleaver. And-- Mr. Randazzo. The GSEs, it would be unpleasant in the short term. It would benefit all homeowners and taxpayers in the long term. Mr. Cleaver. So we call a press conference and say, ``Everybody here is going to suffer for a while, but just suffer in joy because it's going to change later?'' Mr. Randazzo. There are short-term pains that are going to come with any significant change in government policy. And the GSEs have been well-rooted into American society and-- Mr. Cleaver. Yes, that's the point-- Mr. Randazzo. --the market for a long time. But yes, there will be some short-term pains as a process of phasing out the GSEs, as we try to figure out how the private sector is going to step in behind them. Mr. Cleaver. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. If the gentleman would yield to me his remaining time, I would just like to say that while the gentleman from Missouri, for rhetorical purposes, talked about eliminating Medicare, I want to reassure all my fellow Medicare recipients, that is not something being currently contemplated--heading off some phone calls before they come. I thank the witnesses and the members. This has been helpful in advancing this discussion. And the hearing is over. 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